At various Dressage shows around Ireland we have been running into Krystyna Pollard - and the Aussie accents attract each other and naturally we started chatting!

Krystyna, a journalist from the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, came to Ireland to "travel and have fun" and that was 12 months ago.

Since coming to Ireland, Krystyna has had fun riding dressage and enjoying seeing the beautiful countryside here in Ireland and with John Keegan and his family and her journey here is soon to come to an end - but she is going out on a high!

This weekend saw Marlton Stud holding the Marlton Dressage Festival in conjunction with the Eastern Dressage Region and the sidesaddle class sparked Krystyna's interest and so she decided to "have a go" in the best of Aussie tradition.

Never having ridden sidesaddle this was a "task" to say the least but then we found out that the horse had also never been ridden sidesaddle so they definitely had their work cut out for them! Side Saddle in Ireland have their own asociation and have approximately 90 members, with classes all around the countryside including at Dublin Show, in August.

The horse Krystyna rode sidesaddle belongs to John Keegan and is an interesting one herself. Supreme Gypsy is a 7 year old black mare with a big white blaze and she looks distinctly "not thoroughbred" so naturally I asked her breeding - a question which brought a "grin and a story" from John. The dam of this mare is a very well bred Hurdles winner, Good Credentials but the Sire was a "big piebald who busted into the yard one night, to have his way with our mare!"

This is a story we hear a bit of in Ireland - the "tinkers" or itinerant population will often travel with a stallion which they don't perhaps keep quite the close eye on that they should and there are many stories of these stallions getting into well bred mares and "having their way with them" resulting in a very surprising foal - over the next 6 months we will be bringing you more stories of exceptional horses coming from this type of mating!

So Good Credentials was a mare who surprised her owners when she produced this "less than throughbred looking foal" that they were expecting after the correct covering she had and John is delighted with her and having a great time competing in Dressage and then just three rides before this competition, Krystyna put a sidesaddle on Supreme Gypsy - with their fourth ride being at the competition itself!

And they won!!!!!!!!!!!

Krystyna was delighted and when she saw her photos her only comment was "oh my god, Mum will be so surprised to see me looking so much like a lady - could you almost say I look elegant?!" Well I would say they definitely look extremely elegant as our photos below show and I hope Kystyna takes up sidesaddle when she goes back home to Australia - maybe this elegant form of Dressage will take off there!