Murphy makes it look Easy
BS National Championships, Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire
ROBERT MURPHY has been quick to show what he can do with opportunity this year. The 21-year-old has claimed nine Horse of the Year Show (HOYS) tickets with his rapidly expanding string and now added the national championship title with How Easy.
Robert faced strong company in the jump-off for the 1.50m international stairway final for the national title, where four clears and the fastest four-faulter had made it through under the table A9 format.
Jake Ward – who went on to claim the HOYS wild card for the highest placed under-25 not already qualified – opened proceedings with Mysaodes Des Roches Rouge. They demonstrated the challenges of the track when they had five fences down.
Louise Saywell, the show’s wild card league winner, had two through to the second phase, jumping first on Carlina D’Argouges. The partnership tipped the plank in front, also collecting a surprising time-fault, despite opting for a quicker line inside a yellow vertical.
Karl Robins and his five-star Nations Cup partner, G Camille HBF, also fell foul of the plank, going for the outside line round the vertical but managing to edge into the lead by just 0.03sec – which also clocked them a time-fault.
Louise rode Ian Dowie’s talented stallion, Kingsborough Kasper, to a fractionally slower round, again adding one for time, but were the first to leave the fences standing.
It was left to Robert, whose quick first round had earned him final draw, to be the first to prove a clean sheet was possible. The 10-year-old Talan gelding, bred by Sandra Low-Mitchell,
