Ellen Whitaker gained her third success in the Zinc Management Speed Horse competition on the final day of the Horse of the Year Show in Birmingham yesterday after a breathtaking performance on her prolific winner, Kanselier.

Whitaker, 22, runner-up in The Puissance on Saturday night, skimmed round the 12-fence course to relegate Laura Renwick, on her noted speed horse, Beluga II, to second place by 1.71sec. “We've dropped him down a level because of his age and he finds this type of class easy,” Whitaker said of her 17-year-old gelding, whom she originally used for grand-prix classes.

Even so, it was Whitaker's superb horsemanship, enabling her to take advantage of two time-saving short cuts, which ensured her third win - and the most satisfying. “It's the first time I've won with a clear round,” she said. Her previous two successes - on Henri de Here two years ago and Quinton in 2004 - came after one mistake, which had added four penalty seconds to her score.

The success was compensation for losing out to Robert Whitaker, her in-form cousin, in The Puissance. Robert, already the winner of three classes at the show, electrified the crowd when he and Finbarr V cleared the big wall at 7ft 3in. Ellen, riding her new horse, Latina - bought from Germany in April this year - had been the only other rider to reach the final round, but clipped the top brick of the wall.

Latina's performance reassured Ellen that she has found the key to the mare. “We bought her specially for puissance classes,” she said, “and I thought I could just get straight on her and compete, but she's a big horse and was ridden by a man before. When she realised he had a girl on board, she started pulling me about.”

After the Arena UK Show last month, when the mare was almost “unrideable”, Whitaker, whose top horse, Locarno, is sidelined for a year with a tendon injury, decided to take a tougher line with her and “show her who's boss”.

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