Olympic incentive will add spice to 2019 Dublin Horse Show

The 2019 show jumping FEI Nations Cup fixtures were confirmed at the weekend and will see Ireland compete in qualifiers in France, Poland, the UK, and at home in Dublin. The series carries an extra edge this year as one Olympic place is winnable for those who make it to the October final in Barcelona.

That raises the stakes at this year’s Aga Khan Nations Cup at Dublin Horse Show. It will be the last qualifying event for the countries chasing points to get to Barcelona, so for those lagging behind by then it will be a crucial fixture. In between Dublin in August, and Barcelona in October, teams will have another opportunity to get to Tokyo at the European Championships in Rotterdam where three places are on offer, but the ‘last chance saloon’ of the Spanish finale cannot be overlooked.

The big rivals for Ireland on that score will be Italy and Great Britain. The Netherlands, Switzerland, and Sweden will also be among those in Dublin competing for points but they have already qualified for the Olympcs and so will only be concerned with getting to Barcelona for its own sake.

Irish team manager Rodrigo Pessoa will hope to have a good haul of points in the bag after the three fixtures that precede Dublin, though the Aga Khan is an event he would love to win anyway.

Ireland’s campaign starts at La Baule in France in May, the venue where he had his first competitive outing as Irish boss in 2017. Ireland finished third that day, aided by a double-clear from Shane Breen on Golden Hawk and the French celebrated a home win. In last year’s corresponding fixture, things didn’t go so well, as Ireland slumped to sixth and the French were also off-colour in seventh. It was the only blip for the Pessoa’s team in last year’s series in which Ireland finished as runners-up in the qualifying table and went on to finish third in the Barcelona final.

The second qualifying fixture for Ireland will be in Sopot, Poland in June before the team heads to Hickstead in late July as defending champions. On a wild, wet afternoon last year, Ireland were locked in a duel with their British hosts which went to a jump-off in which Anthony Condon clinched it on Aristio, getting home faster that Holly Smith and Hearts Destiny. A repeat would do very nicely for Pessoa ahead of the final fixture in Dublin on August 9th.

There are no Olympic concerns for Ireland’s eventing manager Sally Corscadden as the Tokyo place has already been secured with the runner-up finish at the World Equestrian Games last September. There are seven venues in the eventing nations cup series, with Cappoquin hosting the fourth at the end of July. There is no eventing final as such, with the nations cup series concluding as a league table after the seventh event in Boekelo, Netherlands in October.

Yesterday, Horse Sport Ireland announced the appointment of High Performance Team Managers for the Irish underage eventing teams. Becky Cullen retains her role as manager of the Pony (U16) team having led her charges to European Bronze in 2017 and Silver in 2018.

We only have one athlete left from last year’s championships so I am looking forward to the challenge of taking a new group of athletes to Strzegom (the venue for this year’s Europeans),” she commented.

The Junior (U18) team will be managed by experienced Swedish eventer Dag Albert, while former Pony manager Sue Shortt will take charge of the Young Rider (U21) team.

In this week’s show jumping the Winter Equestrian Festival in Florida commences its second week of action today. Daniel Coyle achieved the best Irish result of the opening week when taking second place with Farrel in Sunday’s Rosenbaum Grand Prix.

Also this week the third-last round of the FEI World Cup takes place at Leipzig in Germany. The past weekend’s leg in Basel was a rewarding one for the Irish with Bertram Allen being crowned leading rider of the show and Billy Twomey and Denis Lynch also making their presence felt.

Allen won Friday’s speed class with GK Casper before taking second in the accumulator event with Izzy By Picobello and ending the day with fifth on Molly Malone in the Grand Prix. On Saturday he finished fifth on GK Casper in the Golden Drum contest won by Twomey and Lady Lou with Lynch second on Dito. Only Allen managed to get in the points in Sunday’s World Cup qualifier with an eighth place finish on Molly Malone.

Also on Sunday, Shane Carey notched an Irish win in the two-star Grand Prix in Sopot on Fecybelle.

Lynch and Twomey will be in Leipzig but Allen skips this weekend’s round and will head to the final two legs in Amsterdam and Bordeaux.