After a superb Irish double on Saturday when Tom Slattery had claimed the Kerrygold Mini-Grand Prix and Edward Doyle had shared the Puissance honours with Germany's Rene Tebbel, hopes were high that the home side could net the lion's share of the u £66,000 on offer for yesterday's Grand Prix.
But it was British visitor John Whitaker who came off best in a six-way jump-off, as Eddie Macken's single error with FAN Pascal dropped him to fourth.
But while Whitaker scooped the u£22,000 winner's cheque yesterday afternoon, his compatriot Geoff Billington had his earnings for the week slashed by £900 after being brought before the international appeal committee for abuse of a senior RDS executive on Saturday afternoon.
The appeal committee, headed by Lord Carew, met Billington and the British team manager, Mr Ronnie Massarella, yesterday morning following written complaints from Patrick Hanly, financial controller in the RDS human resources department, about an incident the previous day.
Geoff Billington was charged with what Lord Carew described yesterday as "continuous foul and abusive language and jostling" of a senior executive of the RDS. "It was absolutely and wholly unacceptable behaviour, and we took a very serious view of it," Lord Carew said, after the appeal committee had fined Billington 2,000 Swiss Francs (£900) and demanded that he make a written apology to Patrick Hanly.
"He wasn't even a member of the British team," Lord Carew said of Billington, who had been competing as an individual at the special invitation of the RDS. "But he was extremely remorseful and apologetic."
Billington had pleaded mitigating circumstances for the incident, stating that Ronnie Massarella's grandson Byron had been missing for over an hour and a lengthy search of the showgrounds by Massarella and Billington had failed to find the youngster.
A subsequent public address announcement that the nine-year-old was in the lost children's centre prompted Billington to approach Patrick Hanly in a bid to get a message to the child that his grandfather was on the way to collect him. Billington said yesterday that Hanly, who had a two-way radio, "ignored me twice, so I told him what I thought of him".
"As far as I'm concerned, we will not tolerate anyone abusing a member of our staff," the RDS chief executive, Mr Shane Cleary, said after attending the appeal committee hearing. "Nothing justifies it. There are no mitigating circumstances."
Just hours after the fine was levied, Billington was back in the main arena for the Kerrygold speed championship and, although he couldn't quite get the better of fellow Briton Robert Smith, he came closest of all, to net £2,000 for second place.
It was Britain all the way yesterday, with John Whitaker and the 19-year-old Virtual Village Welham picking up their third Grand Prix victory of the year, this time at the expense of Germany's Holger Hetzel.
The defending champions, Nick Skelton and Hopes Are High, sliced almost three seconds of the target, but they also sliced off the back rail at the fifth to take a £13,000 pay cut in third. Eddie Macken and FAN Pascal, runners-up in both the Celbridge and Dun Laoghaire Grand Prix classes last weekend, hit the third from home to finish fourth.