HSI keep funding at last year’s level

HORSE SPORT IRELAND is again putting up a prizefund of €75,500 for its Irish Sport Horse Studbook Show Jumping Series.

The series, which is open to horses aged five and 6/7, will feature competitions at six venues and will be run on a league basis. Each venue will have a prizefund of €10,000, with €15,500 on offer at the grand final in Tattersalls.

The series will also be used in the selection process for the FEI World Breeding Jumping Championships for Young Horses in Lanaken.

HSI chairman Joe Walsh said: “Despite the current funding challenges, we are delighted to be able to fund this series at the same level as last year.”

HSI’s Director of Breeding & Programmes Alison Corbally says the initiative is impacting on standards.

“I believe that this series has significantly improved the standard of young horse jumping in Ireland in recent years. This can be evidenced in the improvement in our results at the World Breeding Championships for Young Horses at Lanaken, where we have won three medals in the past two years, having never won before.”

The series begins at Louth County Show (April 22-24), followed by Barnadown (May 6-8), Cavan (May 13-15), Mullingar International (June 4-6), Galway County Show (June 18-19), Cork Summer Show (July 9-10), with the final at the Tattersalls Ward Union Hunt Show, in Ratoath, Co Meath, on July 22-24.

Meanwhile, HSI is this week distributing its 2011 stallion book, with many new features. HSI has always claimed to have a laissez faire attitude to breeding, their key being to provide information to the breeder to enable informed decision-making.

Accordingly, for the first time, the new book includes international performance information, star ratings and linear scoring information. The book gives full details of each approved stallion, including their breeding and number of foals registered.

Performance information at national level, for show jumping, eventing and dressage, for individual stallions and their progeny, is also included where available, courtesy of ShowjumpingIreland, Eventing Ireland and Dressage Ireland.

- ENDURANCE IRELAND members obviously feel there are benefits to being affiliated to Horse Sport Ireland, as they have voted overwhelmingly to return to the fold.

At last November’s AGM of the organisation — aka the Irish Long Distance Riding Association — chose to terminate its affiliation with HSI. Association secretary Kathy Conly subsequently cited members’ dissatisfaction with the level of service provided by HSI, saying they were not receiving value for money.

A reversal of the decision could only be achieved through an EGM, which took place on March 24. Members were offered three motions, that ILDRA affiliate with HSI, that it become a section of HSI or that it remain unaffiliated from HSI. The first option was selected, on a vote of 54 votes to eight.

HSI chief executive Damian McDonald yesterday said: “We were pleased to get the opportunity to address the ILDRA members, which cleared up a lot of issues.”

- THE Global Champions Tour (GCT) is synonymous with big money and so it is too with Denis Lynch in terms of his fundraising to ease the plight of “suffering Irish horses”.

The GCT website this week highlighted how Lynch’s efforts garnered €10,000 for his cause at the tour’s first round in Doha, Qatar, noting that he will continue to collect donations throughout the season.

Lynch recently travelled to the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals headquarters in Longford to present it with a cheque for €100,000 to help it tackle the horse welfare crisis.

While it is acknowledged that there is a horse welfare problem, its extent is disputed. Horrific incidences of neglect and downright abuse have given credence to the perception that Ireland is awash with suffering equines. This is a picture that has been transmitted worldwide, with even the New York Times citing top national hunt trainer Ted Walsh as saying there are up to 100,000 surplus horses, something he vehemently denied to this correspondent. In February, Horse Sport Ireland claimed “statements that 20,000 horses are abandoned and neglected in Ireland are exaggerated and cannot be substantiated in any way”.

Yet, the GCT website currently says “thousands of horses are threatened by starvation and a painful death because their owners can or will no longer pay for feed and veterinarians due to several reasons, one of which is the economic crisis. Thousands of animals, it is estimated, have become dispensable. Many of them wander around the countryside, stray between high-rise buildings, are tethered at the roadside starved or sick”.

German-based Lynch is quoted as saying he is distressed by the ordeal inflicted on some horses.

“Our tradition and culture are very closely linked to horses. Until now the man who could keep a horse was a proud man. When I see the suffering in my homeland, it greatly distresses me. When I think of how much money and attention we put into the care of our sport horses and then see how the horses in Ireland are dying a miserable death, then I feel I have to intervene.”

- THE organisers of Sunday’s Templemartin Hunter Trials in Co Cork are promising “a great day out for all the family and a course to suit everybody’s ability”.

The trials begin at 11am, with prizes in each class, which include: training pairs, training ponies, training horses, pony pairs, novice horse pairs, pony singles, novice horse singles, open singles.

Trials are also planned for Sunday May 1.

For more information, phone [phone] or check out Carbery Equestrian Centre’s facebook page.