Ireland's show jumpers eyeing Olympic gold in Palace of Versailles

This country has a long elite tradition in the sport but the team for these 2024 Games will take to the arena at the Palace of Versailles ranked No.1 in the Longines League of Nations rankings with one event still to go come October.

Tue, 09 Jul, 2024 - 06:43

Brendan O'Brien

They are the Olympic medal contenders that have evaded the radar. Until now. And, like Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy on the water, Rhys McClenaghan on the pommel, and others, Ireland’s show jumpers will be going to Paris with gold the goal.

The team’s graph has been streaking upwards for some time. Ireland won the Aga Khan in Dublin in 2022, claimed a silver at last year’s Europeans in Milan and topped off a run of big Nations Cup results by dominating last week’s highly-prestigious running in Aachen.

Michael Blake’s chosen Olympic team of Denis Lynch, Bertram Allen, Shane Sweetnam and Cian O'Connor were so far ahead of a world-class field that they were able to win without anchor rider O’Connor even needing to jump in round two.

Aachen was the last top-class event to be held before the Games and the same quartet will represent the country in France, with Allen travelling as reserve for a tournament where only three riders compete and all three scores count.

“To be fair, the lads have been absolutely brilliant this year,” said Blake, the team manager at Monday’s team announcement. “We set some targets and they haven’t met all of them but no one does. Perfection is only unto our Lord, probably.

“So I am really, really happy with the way things have been going. We have a very strong team selected, like everyone else we need things to go our way. If things go our way then it could be a good time for us over there.”

Blake confirmed that meant going for gold when asked later.

There are individual medals on offer as well. Coyle and Sweetnam are ranked 11th and 12th in the world right now. O’Connor is lower down at 26th but is a vastly experienced Olympian who was stripped of gold in 2004 but claimed a bronze eight years later.

They are all contenders in their own right as well.

“They say that when you make plans God laughs but I think he has been laughing with us so far this time,” said Blake. “We set our sail out that we wanted win the league and we won the league. We wanted to win in Aachen and we won in Aachen.

“The next thing we want to win [is the Olympics and] we want to win also.”

Joining them in Paris will be Abigail Lyle in dressage and an eventing team made up of Susie Berry, Sarah Ennis and Austin O’Connor (with Aoife Clark as the travelling alternate), and they too have some momentum on their side.

O’Connor was the only of the four on duty in Aachen over the weekend when the Irish team claimed a third place at the Nations Cup competition but that just shows the depth available to high-performance director Dag Albert.

Three different riders again were involved earlier in the summer when Ireland came up trumps at the Nations Cup event in Millstreet, Cork and even the understated Albert couldn’t play down hopes of another medal contender on the outskirts of Paris.

“They are all going very well. It has been a very good year actually,” said the Swede. “I feel like we can go out there with as good a chance as any other team because all four of the horses have been performing very consistently through this year.”