Her father John Whitaker had been trying to buy the nine-year-old horse for a year before the Norwegian owner finally agreed

Her father, John Whitaker, had been trying to buy the nine-year-old horse for a year before the Norwegian owner finally agreed to the sale four months ago.Perepliot is only 15.1 hands high but he has the scope of a bigger horse. The organisers are expecting to top the 30,000 mark during the five days this year.HORSE OF THE YEAR SHOW (Wembley Arena): Young Riders Stakes: 1 Perepliot (L Whitaker) clear, 51.06sec; 2 Kildalton Lad (P Barker) clear, 53.21; 3 Boherdeal Clover (B Twomey) clear, 54.90.Squibb and Davies Junior Foxhunter Championship: 1 Classic Henna (C Jordan) clear, 31.46sec; 2 Gwaun Benjamin (L Riley) clear, 36.04; 3 CJS Kemosabi (V Jefferies) clear, 36.30.. The 14-year-old rider, who fell off on her first visit to Wembley last year, had not planned the quick route when she rode into the arena. “I got a bit carried away and decided to do it at the last minute,” she said.The show, which is celebrating its golden jubilee, already has ticket sales in excess of 21,500 which was the attendance figure for the whole of last year’s show. Since riders were limited to one mount in the championship, little Perepliot went home again with an unblemished Wembley record.Claudia Jordan took a bold short-cut on her pony, Classic Henna, to win the later Junior Foxhunter Championship by a handsome margin of 4.58sec.

Yesterday’s contest was a qualifier for The Young Riders Championship of Great Britain in which 18-year-old Louise Whitaker had elected to ride the already qualified, and more experienced, Livingston II. There have been allegations that Griffith Joyner used performance- enhancing drugs, plus speculation that her death was linked to the long- term effects of steroids.De Merode said he had assigned his top drug expert to test Griffith Joyner after she won the 100 and 200m in Seoul. Paul Barker, the runner-up on Kildalton Lad, had spent a year as John Whitaker’s stable-jockey and Billy Twomey, a 19-year-old Irish rider from County Cork, is currently based with Michael Whitaker and is making quite a name for himself while riding the younger horses in his mentor’s Nottinghamshire yard.
Perepliot’s visit to Wembley was a brief one. The nine-year- old found yesterday’s course well within his compass when jumping clear to win by 2.15sec, defeating two other riders with Whitaker connections.

Perepliot is only 15.1 hands high – “He’s even too small for me,” John Whitaker said – but he has the scope of a bigger horse. LOUISE WHITAKER opened the account for her well-known family when winning yesterday’s Young Riders Stakes during the opening session of the Horse of the Year Show. The more dovish elements on the board of English First Division Rugby, the pressure group representing the 14 Allied Dunbar Premiership One clubs, were attempting to repair the damage yesterday by distancing themselves from remarks by Mike Smith, the Saracens chief executive, and Sir John Hall, the Newcastle owner.There will, of course, be no meaningful or commercially sustainable British and Irish league without the English, just as their absence removes all meaning from the European Cup that kicked off, emasculated and unsponsored, in Belfast last Friday. A degree of new financial support has belatedly been secured, however, and the details will be revealed in Dublin before tomorrow evening’s Pool A fixture between Leinster and Stade Francais.It seemed clear yesterday that Heineken, who pumped some pounds 10m into the first three years of the competition, had finally been jettisoned as major backers. She was riding the little Russian-bred Perepliot whom her father, John Whitaker, had been trying to buy for a year before the Norwegian owner finally agreed to the sale four months ago. “We haven’t had any word from the tournament organisers but if they’re making an announcement of new money before the weekend, I think it’s safe to assume we’re not involved,” said a Heineken spokesman.Other potential sponsors include Mark McCormack’s International Management Group and a Swiss-based sports marketing company, ISL. Whatever the outcome, the Heineken Cup appears to be an ex-tournament; a sad, squalid end to something very special..

Delegates from the four home unions gathered in Manchester on Tuesday for the first meeting of a working party set up to examine the feasibility of a new cross-border tournament pulling together the best from every corner of the British Isles. Considering Griffiths had recently ruled out any possibility of playing contact with those self-same Englishmen while they continued to test governing body regulations through the European Commission, his remarks merely reinforced rugby’s leading role in professional sport’s theatre of the absurd.Still, Griffiths cut no more absurd a figure than those hard-liners among the English clubs who between them had managed to concoct a public relations disaster with their intemperate anti-British league comments at the weekend. They unanimously agreed that such a competition was the way forward and that the Irish provinces, who were rather neglected when the idea was first floated in August, should be fully involved. Had the English clubs not boycotted the discussion, northern hemisphere rugby might be celebrating.
Glanmor Griffiths, the chairman of the Welsh Rugby Union, was asked to double up by chairing the working party as well and he promptly recorded his disappointment at the absence of the English clubs from the negotiating table. The only people we now have to worry about are the English, who wanted to be in this time last month but are now determined to stay out at least until the end of October.