Ireland celebrated their first senior Nations Cup victory of 2026 with a superb performance in the Longines EEF Series at Scuderia La Caccia in Bedizzole.<\/p>\n
They emerged victorious in Italy after a dramatic jump-off against the host nation.<\/p>\n
The Irish quartet of Kildare’s Niall Talbot on Charming Dream, Wexford’s Harry Allen riding Edison de Hus, Kilkenny’s Seamus Hughes Kennedy with the Sinead Kennedy-bred Cosmo and Louth’s Mark McAuley aboard Rossi VD Heffinck, combined brilliantly to secure victory ahead of Italy in second place and Switzerland in third.<\/p>\n
The result marked an important breakthrough for the Irish team, delivering their first victory since Jessica Kurten took over from Michael Blake as Irish team manager in December 2025.<\/p>\n
Thirteen nations lined up in Bedizzole with the stunning Scuderia La Caccia venue providing a spectacular backdrop near the shores of Lake Garda.<\/p>\n
The competition quickly developed into a battle between some of Europe’s strongest Nations Cup teams.<\/p>\n
Switzerland and Italy shared the lead after the opening round on a flawless score of zero, while Ireland remained firmly in contention heading into a pressure-filled second round.<\/p>\n
McAuley produced a crucial clear round to keep Ireland\u2019s hopes alive before Italy answered immediately with another immaculate performance to force a jump-off in front of an enthusiastic home crowd.<\/p>\n
Ireland turned to Harry Allen and Edison de Hus for the deciding round – and the talented combination delivered emphatically.<\/p>\n
Having already jumped double clear during the Nations Cup competition, Allen produced a third flawless round of the day with remarkable composure and speed to secure the win.<\/p>\n
Italy\u2019s hopes faded when Piergiorgio Bucci lowered an early rail in the jump-off, confirming Ireland\u2019s triumph.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland celebrated their first senior Nations Cup victory of 2026 with a superb performance in the Longines EEF…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-452615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}