Glorious sunshine gives show a giddy-up

LIFE is Simple read the slogan on a T-shirt worn by a young woman at Dublin Horse Show yesterday — just, eat, sleep and ride horses.

It summed up the opening day of the 130th show, which costs €2 million to stage, has 1,500 horses and ponies chasing a €500,000 prizefund with 52 trophies and nearly 300 trade exhibitors.

The glorious sunshine is expected to boost attendances to over 100,000 during the five-day event, with Samsung and Fáilte Ireland as main sponsors.

But while the heatwave encouraged people to shed their light woollies at the RDS yesterday, tradition was maintained in the showing rings where the judges and officials kept their bowler hats on.

Running the show, of course, is a big logistical operation for the 36 full- time RDS employees, 300 temporary staff and hundreds of stewards and other volunteers.

Some 7,000 bales of hay and straw, wood shavings, peat moss, oats, bran and carrots have to be supplied for horses with discerning palates while fresh cut grass is brought in daily for lactating mares with foals.

Around 40,000 flowers of 20 different varieties plus shrubs, baskets and boxes are used to decorate the 42-acre site. The grounds are irrigated with hundreds of thousands of gallons of water from the society’s on-site well which can deliver up to 15,000 litres an hour.

RDS chief executive Shane Cleary confirmed yesterday that the society has been asked for further information by Dublin City Council in relation to its planning application for a €100m development plan for the site.

“We sit on a very valuable land bank in Ballsbridge and to increase the scale of funding for agriculture, science, industry and the arts, we must get more long-term revenue from that asset,” he said.

The RDS generated a turnover of €9.5m last year, reported a surplus of €1.54m and allocated €2.9m to its foundation activities. But it had a deficit of around €300,000 on the horse show. A similar loss is expected this year.

Dublin Lord Mayor Royston Brady officially opened the event, having travelled from the Mansion House to Ballsbridge in the horsedrawn mayoral carriage.

Today, eyes will turn from the parade rings to fashionable ladies and their outfits. They will be vying for a €10,000 diamond, first prize in the Appleby Dublin- sponsored fashion parade, the social highlight of the show.