Riders unite to honour Darragh
In inclement weather, hundreds of friends and the sport’s top personalities gathered to pay their final respects at Rathfeigh Church, Co Meath.
Present were world champion Dermott Lennon, double European champion Peter Charles and Trevor Coyle. Eddie Macken, the Irish Olympic showjumping team trainer and a sporting rival of Darragh’s in the 1970s, travelled from his home in Canada.
Showjumping superstars John Whitaker and Geoff Billington made the journey from Britain. President Mary McAleese and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern were represented by their aides de camp, while Army Equitation School commander Lieutenant Colonel Gerry O’Gorman was also in attendance.
Darragh died unexpectedly at his Meath home last Monday night from a suspected heart attack. He was aged 51.
Former Equestrian Federation of Ireland secretary general Ned Campion, in a graveside eulogy, said Darragh was “remarkable as a sportsman, an individual and as a friend”.
He competed with “great flair and style, and in a manner that his country could be proud of”, he said.
“His achievements are so numerous as to defy any valid attempt to do them justice and, in any case, they are all enshrined for ever in the chronicles of the sport.
“Paul Darragh’s name will, as a result, live for ever when Irish showjumping’s history is told,” said Mr Campion, a former Nations Cup team-mate of the rider, whose career spanned more than 30 years.
Darragh is survived by his wife Jane, father Austin, son Andrew and daughter’s Amy and Lynda, who quoted from the Kipling poem If, a favourite of her father’s.
The Show Jumping Association of Ireland deferred the first meeting of its new executive, scheduled for last night, until next Thursday as a mark of respect of the Darragh family.
