Shane Sweetnam hoping to capture nation's imagination in Versailles

CATCHING NATION'S ATTENTION: Shane Sweetnam is hoping to catch the nations attention and shine a light on showjumping once again. Picture: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

Work-life balance? Best of luck finding the line where one ends for Shane Sweetnam and the other begins. There is no line. There never has been. Not when he was growing up in Castlemagner in North Cork. And not now in Wellington, Florida where he is based having turned his back on an IT career after college and made for the States.

The youngest of five, Sweetnam followed all of those older siblings into pony-riding. He was seven. Jerry and Marie Sweetnam, his mum and dad, worked as trainers. Horses were part of their daily bread. The animals had to be fed and the stables cleaned, in and around their school and their sport and everything else.

Even now, their Sweet Oak Farm operation near Palm Beach is an all-hands-on-deck business. His wife Ali is an equestrian coach, their children Collin, Olivia and Lucy have competed in pony hunter classes in the USA, and these equine links are spread to other branches of the wider family tree.

His niece Abbie and nephew Ryan have both competed at elite jumping level. Donnacha Ryan, who played rugby for Munster and Ireland and is now assistant coach to Ronan O’Gara at La Rochelle, was another who showed interest in the horses when he would arrive from Nenagh for a few weeks during the summers.

“I used to beat the crap out of him when he was younger” Sweetnam laughs.

The pair still keep in touch. Sweetnam was due to take in Ireland’s historic first defeat of the All Blacks at Soldier Field in Chicago in 2016, a game which Ryan started, but had to miss it because of a competition elsewhere that weekend.

Ryan had similar scheduling issues when he was forced to cry off one of Sweetnam’s events on the continent a few weeks ago. When La Rochelle won their Top 14 quarter-final he had to spend the day preparing for their last four tie instead.

The Tipperary man did get to take in the Dublin Horse Show last year, and there are plans in the offing to be there when Sweetnam and the rest of the Irish show jumpers in action at the Palace of Versailles at the fast-approaching Olympic Games.

The cousins remain very close long after those summer stayovers started to dry up and Ryan, who had long been a decent GAA player, found golf and then progressed later in his teens to rugby where he would ultimately make his name and his life.

But, at what point did those beatings stop?

“I dunno, when he got tall, because I didn’t get that tall.” 

This will be Sweetnam’s second successive Olympics, his first having ended on a sour note in Tokyo three years ago when, having travelled as a reserve and replaced Cian O’Connor for the team event, he suffered a fall from Alejandro and the team was eliminated.

He spoke at the time of being in a state of shock and, while it still ranks as a negative experience, it has been used as a tool to build and to move on. He feels mentally stronger turning for Paris and he has an exceptional horse under him in James Kann Cruz.

“So it was a very good and bad experience but I learned a lot from it.” 

That progression is franked by the fact that Sweetnam has made this Games as a declared starter. He will be a key member of an Ireland team that has a serious shot at competing for a medal, gold included, after a stunning series of results in recent years.

Few of those results have created more than a ripple with the regular Irish sports fan.

“There are two things with Irish show jumping in that sense. One is the Olympics and the other is the Aga Khan. Other than that I could win the biggest Grand Prix, in Aachen [recently] worth a million and a half, and there is very little chatter about it.” 

Now 43, Sweetnam is old enough to remember when that was different. When riders like Eddie Macken and Paul Darragh were household names and competing live on RTÉ. Do something special in Paris and we all might start jumping over our garden walls again.