Paul O’Shea blitzed home on Imerald van’t Voorhof to claim the Sport Ireland Classic on the opening day of Dublin Horse Show yesterday.

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.

Ireland’s eventers have a home international fixture this week as the Sema Lease Camphire International Horse Trials get underway tomorrow in Waterford.

Last Friday, the Ukrainian show jumping team contested a Tokyo 2020 qualifier in Budapest and amassed a total of 41 faults.

A Kildare teenager has become the youngest ever winner of the Hickstead Derby in the UK today.

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.

New Zealander Tim Price has topped the latest FEI world eventing rankings just days after winning the George Mernagh Memorial CCI4*-S at Tattersalls International Horse Trials in Co Meath, while Ireland’s Elizabeth Power has made a significant climb following her fourth-place finish in the Irish Field CCI4*-L at the same meeting.

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.

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.

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.

The securing of a one-year extension to his contract as Ireland’s show jumping team manager was welcomed last week by Rodrigo Pessoa, whose priority in his coming term is to get his charges to Tokyo 2020.

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.

The show jumping team season comes to its conclusion this weekend when fifteen countries do battle in the annual FEI Nations Cup Final in Barcelona.

The Irish eventing team kept their nerve to hold onto the silver medal on the final day of the eventing competition at the World Equestrian Games in North Carolina yesterday where Pádraig McCarthy added to the Irish haul by claiming silver in the individual competition.

The opening ceremony for the World Equestrian Games (WEG) took place last night in Tryon, North Carolina and the first of thirteen days of action gets underway today. Endurance, Reining and Dressage are the disciplines kicking things off and Ireland is represented in all three.

Rodrigo Pessoa must have been inspired when picking the Irish riders for today’s Aga Khan nations cup competition as they claimed the top three places in yesterday’s Stablelab Stakes at the Stena Line Dublin Horse and almost nabbed the fourth spot as well.

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.

With equestrian sport’s world championships, the World Equestrian Games, less than three months away, Irish eventing was boosted at the weekend by a number of stellar performances at the four-star German meeting at Luhmühlen.

“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.

The first Irish international event of the year gets underway this weekend at Ballindenisk in Co Cork. Organiser Peter Fell told the Irish Examiner yesterday he was confident the recent adverse weather would not affect the staging of the event.

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.

“You don’t win nations cups without jumping clear rounds and we didn’t jump enough of them,” said Michael Blake after he had seen the Irish show jumping team he managed fall short of repeating last year’s success in Ocala, Florida on Sunday evening.

Ireland has two show jumping teams in action this weekend for the first of this year’s nations cup fixtures. Michael Blake takes charge of affairs for the five-star meeting in Ocala, Florida, while Taylor Vard will be overseeing matters at Abu Dhabi’s five-star contest in the UAE.

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).

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

Denis Lynch and Cian O'Connor have completed a remarkable five days for Ireland 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. 

Horses are definitely an obsession for me.

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.

Paul Kennedy is in line for his biggest team challenge to date when Ireland take on seven opponents in Friday’s important Division 1 Nations Cup of Italy in Rome.

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.

The securing of maximum points is the target of manager Rodrigo Pessoa as Ireland’s show jumping team begin their competitive season in the five-star Nations Cup at La Baule, France this Friday.

Ireland’s new show jumping team manager Rodrigo Pessoa maintains that Irish teams have been underperforming and says that his goal is to transfer good individual performances to better team effect.