A NEW generation took top honours in the Suffolk Horse classes at the Suffolk Show yesterday, with the supreme championship going to Clemmils Anya, a two-year-old filly.

Duncan Brodie

A NEW generation took top honours in the Suffolk Horse classes at the Suffolk Show yesterday, with the supreme championship going to Clemmils Anya, a two-year-old filly.

Anya, sired by the highly successful stallion Colony Millennium, is owned by Michael Tollemache from Offton, near Ipswich, who has been keeping Suffolk horses since retiring from the City nearly 20 years ago, when his wife bought him his first mare, Amber, from George Paul.

Yesterday's success was his second breed championship at the Suffolk Show, with a foal from Amber, Alice, having claimed the title in the mid-1990s.

A delighted Mr Tollemache said of his latest champion: “We acquired her in January last year and she has developed well. She has a very nice nature and has also grown well.”

Reserve champion yesterday was the eight-year-old gelding Block Fen Jester, owned by Fiona Clark and shown by husband Roger.

The champion stallion was the four-year-old Bazoo Riley, also sired by Colony Millennium and owned by Wendy Fenwick, c/o Banham Zoo in Norfolk, which beat in to second place last year's Suffolk Show breed champion, the eight-year-old Euston Malachite, owned by The Countess of Euston and Simon Juby.

Wendy Fenwick also won the junior gelding class with the three-year-old Whatton Chieftan while there were also two class wins for the Fleming family from Eyke, near Woodbridge, who won the mare class with the eight-year-old Eyke Amber and the mare with foal at foot class with the 10-year-old Eyke Opal.

The foal class, however, was won by the Suffolk Punch Trust's Colony Vee, the first Suffolk foal to be born this year and the subject of a competition to name her during an open day held by the trust at its Hollesley Bay site in April.

The judging of the Best Feet classes - peculiar to the Suffolk breed, in which feet were once a genetic weakness - unusually featured two judges yesterday, with Philip Ryder-Davies having to abandon his role in order to fulfil veterinary duties elsewhere on the showground and being substituted by regular foot judge Richard Gowing.