Three eventers poised to get green light for Olympics
Horse Sport Ireland (HSI) is confident it will feature three Irish eventing places, the basic requirement for a team. It came, ultimately, as a result of the final push in the Goresbridge Go For Gold International Horse Trials at Ballindenisk that culminated last Sunday with Camilla Speirs winning the short-format CIC class and Mark Kyle battling back to sixth in the long-format CCI to earn two Olympic places.
By the early hours of Monday morning, HSI was happy to unofficially declare that results at events in Russia and Italy had gone Ireland’s way and that Michael Ryan’s second place in the CIC at Ballindenisk with the venerable Old Road had helped him garner a third Olympic slot for Ireland.
In addition, according to HSI’s calculations, two Irish riders, Jayne Doherty and Capt Geoff Curran, filled joint first reserve and third reserve, with the former claiming fifth with Ravenstar in the CIC, coupled with fourth for the latter in the long-format CCI on The Jump Jet.
In many respects Kyle’s fightback from last place in the CCI after dressage (74.9 penalties) to finish sixth with Step In Time summed up the Irish spirit at Ballindenisk, while Elizabeth Power’s second place with September Bliss to Ollie Townend on the Irish-bred Arctic Mouse gave further cause for optimism.
CIC winner Speirs knows that the real test lies ahead if she is to earn a place in the team.
“Definitely, the Olympics are an aim, but I don’t want an easy route to London. I want to get a Badminton result and be well prepared. As important as it is to keep a horse sound, you cannot keep them in cotton wool,” said the Athy rider.
“My horse loves Badminton and Ginny [Elliot, the high-performance manager] wants the best team, so we will all be tested accordingly,” said the 22-year-old, who put the effort in context, by revealing she had travelled to England on St Stephen’s Day to train with dressage coach Ferdi Eilberg.
For HSI, too, the sense of achievement was as palpable as the sense of relief on Sunday. Rightly, the governing body will be measured by results and, if there was no Irish eventing representation in London, it would have been an indictment of it and its programmes.
In show jumping, Billy Twomey and Denis Lynch also deserve to be lauded for claiming two Olympic places.
Understandable then that HSI will today trumpet the five Irish representatives in the Games.
lIreland show jumping manager Robert Splaine is optimistic of a good result for Ireland in the first nations cup of the year, at the Winter Equestrian Festival in Florida.
“I think we will do well. My team consists of four accomplished riders, who have had some good results already this year. I would be optimistic of a good performance. It will be a strong cup, 11 nations, and we are looking forward to the challenge. It would be nice to get off to a good start and, with two slots available for the Olympics, it will be interesting to view riders on this side of the Atlantic,” he said.
The team is: Shane Sweetnam (Amaretto Darco), Richie Moloney (Slieveanorra), Darragh Kerins (Lisona) and Cian O’Connor (Blue Loyd).
Meanwhile, Sweetnam is to take up the reins on the stallion Cyklon 1083 (Cardento x Cortus) after it was bought by Spy Coast Farm.
Cyklon is an 11-year old Swedish warmblood stallion ridden at five star level by Sweden’s Niklas Arvidsson, placing eighth in the Falsterbo Derby last July.
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