An action-packed weekend of flying high, jockeying for position and scrubbing up well

PRESIDENTIAL race-going, sky-high marriage proposals and a wife-carrying competition were among the events which brought people outdoors this weekend.

President Michael D Higgins was at the Curragh with his wife Sabina yesterday to witness the success of 24-year-old jockey William Buick on Great Heavens, owned by Lady Rothschild, in the Darley Irish Oaks.

He later made the presentation, which included a purse of more than €200,000, to trainer John Gosden who praised the class and courage of Great Heavens.

The Classic Ladies Race Wear Competition at the Curragh was won by Sarah Hayes Kelly from Limerick in a cream, knee-length dress with capped lace sleeves from Warehouse. She teamed it with cream peep-toe sling-back shoes from Next, and a sky-blue feathered headpiece from Fifteenth Avenue in Limerick.

For her efforts, she was given a voucher worth €3,000 for Michael Murphy Home Furnishing, in Newbridge, a pamper day at Coogan Bergin in Dublin and a makeover courtesy of The White Door, also in Dublin.

In Bray yesterday, all eyes were on the skies for the Air Spectacular, as part of the town’s Summerfest. It included acrobatic displays from the RV8Tors, dramatic flying from the Blades and demonstrations from the Black Knights Defence Forces Parachute Team.

But no one at the event was more surprised than Damien Murphy (35) from Shankill when he read a message in the sky from his girlfriend Liz Donohue (32). She had harnessed the one-in-four opportunity of a leap year and the co-operation of Sé Pardy and his team at Simtech Aviation to propose to Damien via an 80ft banner behind a tow plane that read “Yum, will you marry me?”

While “Yum” said yes in Bray, other couples in Sneem, Co Kerry, were involved in slightly less romantic activities. Some 16 couples from Ireland as well as from Germany and Slovakia, entered a Finnish-style wife-carrying competition. It involved women being carried over a 250m obstacle course as part of a family fun festival in the town. The event was won by locals Mick Wilson and Tracey Ann Meaker, from Tousist in Kerry.

Sponsored by Paddy Power, the winners scooped €1,000.

Based on practices in the Baltic when potential wives were carried off by eager husbands over water and marsh, the object is to finish an obstacle course in the fastest time. The event was run in a time of one minute and 32 seconds.