With the summer showing season drawing close to an end and the winter nights start drawing in Aintree International Equestrian Centre have given all showing enthusiasts something to look forward over the coming winter months.

On Saturday 28th August, Aintree held their first Showing Show within their impressive arena.

With 25 classes, ranging from In Hand yearlings to In Hand veterans and Lead Rein Show Ponies to ridden Hunter classes, a large selection of classes were available to suit all shapes, sizes, ages and breeds.

With good entries for the In H and classes, which took place in the morning, Aintree were pleased to see 15 come forward for the Championship which was judged by Charlene Richardson and Laura Fishwick. The championship winner, Welsh Chocolate Surprise who was handled well by H Donnelly and qualified by winning the yearlings class, went home with race tickets, a trophy, championship rosette and also a championship sash. Aintree also gave rosettes up to 10th place in the Championship classes.

After a short lunch break the ridden classes took place. The main arena was used for the horse ring, with their own warm up area, and the collecting ring for the pony ring with their own collecting ring along side, worked well. The added bonus for the ponies was that the Championship was held in the main arena. This gave the younger competitors the opportunity to canter around with their rosettes to ‘Simply the Best’ music.

Rivervalley Samson, ridden by Katy Wilcock, went on to do their lap of honour to the music after qualifying in the Ridden Coloured under 15hh class and beating 10 others in the championship. Katy and Samson went home with plenty of red ribbons, race tickets and a sparkling trophy.

Caerddaniel Sugar Hill, who was a real head turner in his qualifying class, the Mountain and Moorland larger breeds went on to impress in the Championship with rider Gemma  Southeran and took away the Horse Championship prize.

After receiving some great feedback from competitors, Vickie Mansell, Aintree’s Events Co-ordinator said ‘We were really pleased with the support we had for our first show, the atmosphere was lovely and we will be looking to try and hold another show in early 2011’.

Please keep a look out on aintreeequestriancentre.co.uk for updates on forthcoming shows.