Ireland’s show jumping team manager Rodrigo Pessoa is set for his third attempt to win the Aga Khan trophy at the Stena Line Dublin Horse Show which gets underway at the Royal Dublin Society today.

The Irish show jumping team will be vying with nine other nations for an Olympic place when they head to the European Championships in Rotterdam next month.

This week Portugal hosts a round of the Longines Global Champions Tour (LGCT) as the action moves to the coastal venue of Estoril. Irish riders Bertram Allen, Michael Duffy, Denis Lynch, Darragh Kenny, and Mark McAuley will all be in the hunt for individual purses as well as appearances for their respective Global Champions League (GCL) teams.

This weekend Ireland’s show jumping team face their second of four Nations Cup qualifiers when they travel to the Baltic venue of Sopot for the Nations Cup of Poland.

Ireland grabs its share of international attention this week with Tattersalls International Horse Trials getting underway in Co. Meath today and Mullingar hosting its two-star international show jumping meeting over the Bank Holiday weekend.

Tipperary’s Shane Breen completed a successful few days at five-star Royal Windsor Horse Show in the UK, by winning the Manama Rose Show Stakes.

Shane Breen will be hoping for a repeat of his form a fortnight ago when lining out in Shanghai this week for the latest round of the Global Champions League.

Cian O’Connor takes his relatively recent acquisition Irenice Horta to this week’s four-star Horses and Dreams fixture at Hagen in Germany.

The world governing body of equestrian sport, the FEI, says that there has been strong interest in the bidding process to stage the 2022 World Championships, with a global spread of potential hosts across four continents which includes venues in 20 different countries.

The past weekend was a good one for Irish dressage.

This weekend should see Ireland’s Judy Reynolds secure a place at the 2018/2019 FEI Dressage World Cup final, which takes place in Gothenburg, Sweden in April.

Qatar stays in focus this week with a second successive five-star fixture in Doha following on from last weekend’s opening round of the Global Champions Tour.

Bertram Allen returns to the scene of a memorable victory this weekend as he lines out in Bordeaux at the final showjumping qualifier in the European division of the 2018/2019 FEI World Cup series.

The year is getting off to a familiar start for Irish riders based in the US as the Winter Equestrian Festival (WEF) commences in Wellington, Florida today and continues for three months.

After a two-week break, the FEI World Cup series resumes this weekend with both dressage and show jumping rounds taking place in Stuttgart in Germany.

Ireland’s Bertram Allen makes his first FEI World Cup appearance of the 2018/2019 season in what is the third round of the series in Verona, Italy this weekend.

Last Sunday’s nations cup in Rotterdam did not involve the Irish team but the result will have a bearing on the country’s league standing up to and including the Aga Khan contest at Dublin Horse Show which is now just over six weeks away.

Bertram Allen and Michael G Duffy will carry Irish hopes in Rome at this weekend’s Italian nations cup, with the country not represented in the team event.

“All in all everyone is happy and it’s onwards and upwards from here,” said Irish rider Shane Breen after Sunday’s nations cup league opener in Samorin, Slovakia.

Young Galway rider Michael Duffy could hardly have hoped for a better debut in the Global Champions League when he represented the mostly-Irish Miami Celtics team, riding Efs Top Contender in the opening round of the season in Mexico City at the weekend.

There were some positive moves for Irish riders in the latest Longines rankings issued by the world governing body, the FEI, yesterday.

Ireland’s show jumpers could be in line for a notable treble as they tackle the Wellington Nations Cup this weekend during week eight of the Winter Equestrian Festival in Florida.

The recent cold snap afflicting the US has lifted just in time for the Winter Equestrian Festival (WEF) which begins today at Palm Beach International Equestrian Center in Wellington, Florida. 

Just in time for Christmas, the Belgian Competition Authority lobbed an unwelcome ‘present’ at both equestrian sport’s world governing body, the FEI, and the privately run Global Champions Tour/Global Champions League (GCT/GCL).

Last weekend’s RTÉ Team Of The Year accolade for Ireland’s show jumpers may have crowned a memorable 2017 for equestrian sport in this country, but we’re not quite done for the year yet.

Horse sports received plenty of recognition at the RTÉ Sports Awards on Saturday night, but it was James McClean who collected the top award.

Now that the Global Champions Tour has concluded for another year, the FEI World Cup series provides the main international show jumping focus in the months ahead.

Irish riders netted three-star Grand Prix victories on both sides of the Atlantic at the weekend, with Paul O’Shea scoring in Tryon, North Carolina, and Darragh Kenny coming out on top at Montpellier in France.

Irish-bred horses continue to dominate the world of eventing, topping the latest yearly rankings by the World Breeding Federation for Sport Horses (WBFSH), which were issued on Monday.

The Manhattan skyline provides the backdrop to this week’s showpiece event on the North American circuit as the fourth staging of the the Rolex Central Park Horse Show gets underway at the Wollman Rink today.

The latest Longines FEI world rankings saw Irish riders on the move following the European Show Jumping Championship success last month.

America have won this year's Aga Khan Nations Cup at the Dublin Horse Show.

A dramatic last-gasp win by Shane Breen in the Sport Ireland Classic crowned Irish dominance of yesterday’s opening-day action at Dublin Horse Show.

This Friday sees the Irish senior show jumping team in action at Hickstead for what will be their last competitive nations cup engagement before Dublin Horse Show. 

Ireland are set to field their strongest show jumping team of the season so far for the Swedish Nations Cup at Falsterbo on Friday.

June has been a remarkable month for Irish riders at the top level of individual competition.

Show jumping team affairs get serious for Ireland from this weekend.

Ireland’s show jumping manager Rodrigo Pessoa was understandably disappointed after last Friday’s seventh-place finish in the five-star Nations Cup at St Gallen in Switzerland, even though it was one of the dispensable ones in his calendar.

After an injury-enforced lay-off Cian O’Connor is set for a return to jumping action this coming weekend in Germany. The Meath rider heads for Wiesbaden’s four-star meeting with his top horse Good Luck, along with Copain du Perchet and his newly-acquired Cybell.

Nations cups dominated last week’s show jumping headlines, but the international limelight over the next few days switches to the relatively new, mixed-nationality format that is the Global Champions League (GCL), writes Mike Dunne.

Cian O’Connor is hoping the celebrations that greeted the arrival on Wednesday of a second child, Cara Louise, to him and his wife Ruth will continue this weekend at the Global Champions Tour (GCT) final in Doha, Qatar.