Arena was still in good order

NO doubt about it. Things go better with coke. So they say at the RDS. Despite the wet week that's been in it, the show jumping arena there was still in good order yesterday.

Mr David Gray of the RDS had two explanations. "We've been extraordinarily fortunate with the weather," he said, as the rain fell ferociously outside, with a force that suggested vengeance for all the nice things we said about its absence last summer. But it hadn't been like that at all on any other day of the Horse Show. "God's little acre," he mused of the holy grounds and those blessed days past.

His second explanation for the good grounds was more secular. Gas really. In 1926, they had taken coke from the old gas works in Dublin and used it as a foundation on which the show jumping arena at the RDS was built. The water just seeps away, down and out.

The top soil helps too. It came from the Carrickmines tennis club in 1982, where nothing has held water for years. And of course there's the grounds staff at the RDS. "Great guys, who know what they're bloody doing," said Mr Gray with enthusiasm.

A marquee seemed the better place to shelter from the rain. "He's a wicked old oakey, cokey, crocadile. The biggest eeny weeny one you've ever seen.

Mr Punch was assuring the boys and girls they were in the presence of someone really superlatively evil. "If he bites me I'll give his nose a black eye," Mr Punch told the boys and girls. They really liked that. He begged the boys and girls to blow hard and the wicked old crock would disappear. But the boys and girls blew too hard, and both Mr Punch and Mr Crock were blown away. Ah well.

"Fantastico" - and it was exclaimed an Italian man as two horses, one from the Ballymacad Foxhounds in Meath and another from the Killinick Harriers in Wexford, almost touched off each other as they simultaneously jumped the log during the chase, which was like a relay race for horses.

The pace was awesome. Overall winners were the Limerick Harriers.

Speed was a difficulty at the Donkey competition in Ring 1. "Yes, yes, Mary has got her going, well done Mary," exulted an excited commentator over the public address as a piebald donkey called Freckles broke into what, with exaggeration, could be described as a trot, while going through its paces.

"Mary" was the jockey. Riding the snow white Snowflakes from Killakee was Ms Maura Farrell (9), from Mullingar, described as "an imported jockey from Mullingar by the commentator. Snowflakes trod the course, with a nonchalance that bordered on contempt, coasting home in second place. Freckles was the winner.

The chief executive of the RDS, Mr Shane Cleary, was "happy". Attendances had been good this year, "particularly today". It was the first Sunday the Horse Show had run "since 1976 or 77". It was "a gamble", but it had paid off. He believed the attendance yesterday was second only to Aga Khan Day.

The RDS will decide over the next few months whether the Sunday show is to become a regular event. Attendances generally had improved over the last four years, he said, "averaging 100,000 (per Horse Show week)". And they had reached the widest television audience ever - approximately 250 million - this year, with Eurosport and BBC Northern Ireland on board for the first time.