O’Connor and Allen team up for Global Champions League

Cian O’Connor and Bertram Allen have signed up to compete for the Valkenswaard United team ahead of the new season of the Global Champions League (GCL) which gets underway in Doha, Qatar, this weekend.

Both riders were team-mates on Ireland’s European Championship-winning side in 2017 and, apart from national duty, they will now combine their efforts on the glamorous GCL circuit.

Allen has been an ever-present in the Valkenswaard squad since the GCL’s inception in 2016. The novel mixed-nationality team format was developed as an addition to the longer-standing Longines Global Champions Tour (GCT) for individual riders. Allen was the first Irish rider to compete for a team and his outfit won the championship in the inaugural year. They finished second in 2017 and were runners-up last term.

Italian Alberto Zorzi has been almost a constant in the squad as well, and last year former world No 1 Marcus Ehning of Germany came on board.

O’Connor joins the Valkenswaard set-up for the new season in which each of the 16 teams in the competition will have squads consisting of six riders — an increase of one from previous seasons. However only two riders line out on any particular day of competition and Allen is in line for an appearance at this weekend’s opener while O’Connor will not be at this fixture.

It’s not the first time a GCL team has featured more than one Irish rider in its ranks: Last term, Miami Celtics were endowed with four — Denis Lynch, Michael Duffy, Cameron Hanley and Shane Breen — with American Jessica Springsteen completing the picture for a team that had quite a good season, finishing third overall.

Lynch has moved to the New York Empire squad and will be at the Doha fixture, while the Miami squad holds onto the other three Irish members, two of whom (Duffy and Breen) will be present in Qatar.

In all, seven of the 16 teams in the GCL have Irish members. Shane Sweetnam will again line out for the Shanghai Swans team, having been their top performer last season when they ended up in overall fifth, though the Corkman will not be involved in the opening round. Meanwhile, Michael G Duffy remains with the Madrid in Motion squad who will now also have the services of fellow Irish rider Mark McAuley — though the latter will not be on duty in this week’s round — while Cannes Stars will have Derry rider Daniel Coyle in their ranks, though he will also be absent from this week’s opener.

The GCL will visit 19 venues worldwide between now and September, when New York, for the first time, hosts a round which will be the conclusion of the GCL proper. There will be a further lucrative finale in November in Prague when both the GCT and GCL will stage lucrative play-offs as an extra end-of-season spectacular. In 2018, when the Prague play-offs were first added to the calendar, Madrid In Motion carried off the top team prize.

With so many Irish riders involved, national team manager Rodrigo Pessoa will have to do a balancing act to put out his strongest possible line-ups for the Nations Cup series and the European Championships. It won’t help that all four of Ireland’s competitive nations cups (in France, Poland, UK and Dublin) clash directly with rounds of the GCL.

Assistant manager Michael Blake took charge of what was a token appearance at the only Middle Eastern round of this year’s nations cup series last weekend in Abu Dhabi. Ireland finished second to Germany, both countries trumping the regional teams for whom this was their only opportunity to qualify for the annual final in Barcelona.

The two available slots went to the UAE, who finished third, and Saudi Arabia who were next in line. Ireland scored three clears, one each from Trevor Breen ((Escapade H), David Simpson (Jenson) and Mark McAuley (Jasco vd Bisschop). McAuley almost made it a double-clear and had only the last fence to negotiate in the second round when his mount appeared to take fright at something and veered sideways. The Louth rider managed to get the horse back on track but the pairing didn’t clear the last and ended up on the floor, thankfully unharmed.

I am very happy with our team,” Michael Blake said. “Trevor’s horse and David’s had never jumped a nations cup before so it was good to see each of them jumping a clear round.

Blake will take charge of the Irish team again this weekend when they line-out in Wellington, Florida for another guest appearance.

The team’s first competitive fixture is still over two months away at the French Nations Cup at La Baule in May.

They will also contest qualifiers in Sopot, Poland in June and at Hickstead, Uk at the end of July before the final qualifier at Dublin Horse Show in August.