Sarah Ennis: From her family's Howth zoo to the Olympic Games

Paris will be Sarah Ennis's second Olympic Games.

8 July 2024; Sarah Ennis during the Team Ireland Paris 2024 team announcement for Equestrian at The Crowne Plaza Hotel in Blanchardstown, Dublin. Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

Francis Ennis used to get a great kick out of answering the family phone in Howth. ‘Hello, Cats and Dogs Home,’ he would chirp on picking up the receiver. More than a few callers hung up, convinced they had dialled the wrong number.

His wife Orla would implore him to stop, but then he wasn’t a million miles from the truth. Their five daughters aside, the house was home to ponies, cats, dogs, rabbits, guinea pigs, an iguana and a parrot. ‘Howth Zoo’ wouldn’t have been a stretch.

Orla seems to have been the orchestrator in most of it. It started with a garage in the back garden that was converted into a stable for their first horse. Then a friend gave them a loan of a Shetland pony every summer and the girls were really hooked.

One of those daughters, Sarah, will start her second Olympics on Saturday. She looks back now and laughs at a pony she describes lovingly as a brat that used to drag their legs along the walls.

More four-legged friends would follow.

“There were three stables up the back garden in a row of houses,” says Sarah. “So the ponies had to come in [via the house], walk through a patio, up steps, into the stables, and to get out we made a ramp down back to the patio.” They were all learning on the fly.

Orla didn’t know much about horses aside from the fact that she loved them. What they couldn’t figure out for themselves they picked up from a veterinary manual their mother bought. This was not the normal horsey set.

"I didn't have an arena until I was 33 when I met my husband and we built one,” says Sarah. “So I grew up riding on the beach, riding in the field, riding on mountains and moors, but I realise now how privileged I was.” It’s a privilege that has taken her all the way to two Olympic Games. Francis will be in Versailles when Sarah competes for Ireland in the three-day eventing. Orla, sadly, passed away from cancer over a decade ago.

She remains central to all this.

It was her mother who passed that love of horses on to her offspring, who dragged them to events every weekend. Sarah looks back now and sees a remarkable woman blessed with infinite levels of patience and passion.

“It's all down to her.” They are all very much their parents’ children. If Orla adored horses then Francis was all about the water. The five girls dipped in and out of both, spending days on their dad’s 17-footer when they weren’t in the saddle.

Sarah’s immersion was even greater, earning a dive-master qualification and accruing a deep appreciation of the sport despite “terrible trouble” with the pressure and ears that wouldn’t pop whenever she descended more than four or five metres below.

“It is the most relaxing thing I have ever done. Go in after a stressful day and I come out and feel absolutely elated because you are regulating your breathing for like an hour. It is like meditation or breathing exercises.

“I did my first [dive] on the Barrier Reef in Australia, you couldn’t not take it up after that. Really good diving off Galway and off Cork … Some of my best dives have definitely been around Ireland, drift dives, night dives. It is amazing.” 

Paris will be her second Olympics but a first for her mare Action Lady M, who she describes as a “cool, feisty woman” that she loves dearly. The challenge in eventing for horse and rider is a combination of jumping, dressage and cross country.

Of the three component parts, it’s the cross country that usually catches the eye, and the one that can cause the most havoc for horse and rider. One slip and out you go. It happened to Germany’s Michael Jung, a top rider at last year’s Europeans.

If the show jumpers are the real medal fancy among Ireland’s equestrian team then the eventers aren’t viewing the trip as some sort of jolly. They have every reason to aim high at the Palace of Versailles.

Ennis’s brilliant ride at the World Equestrian Games in 2018 was crucial to the team winning a silver that year. They came fourth in the Europeans last year and the team finished a very decent eighth in Tokyo in 2021.

“As somebody explained to me, if you all did your average best, that’s your team medal. You don’t have to rock out some unbelievable PB. If you all have your best average day together you are going to take a medal. It definitely makes it more real.”