Splaine horse loan plea rejected
The controversial request came from Ireland show jumping manager Robert Splaine, who took the unusual step of emailing the request to the Army Equitation School. Annestown is usually ridden by Capt David O’Brien.
A Dept of Defence spokesperson said yesterday it had no available horses to strengthen Twomey’s bid.
“The Dept of Defence and Army Equitation School support Team Ireland in its quest for Olympic qualification.
“However, the Army Equitation School is unable to supply any horses for Billy Twomey to ride for the purpose of gaining points towards Olympic qualification. No suitable horses are available to compete at world ranking competition level.
“Kiltoom is leased by the minister and the terms of the lease do not allow it to be made available to any third party.
“Annestown and Mo Chroí are not fit to compete during the relevant period. Annestown is recovering from surgery and Mo Chroí has not competed since Gijon, Spain, in September.”
The spokesperson would not divulge details of the surgery on the nine-year-old gelding Annestown, except to describe it as “corrective” to ensure “full longevity” at the highest level of competition.
Splaine said: “I have no comment to make at this point in time.”
Horse Sport Ireland, which had not revealed if it had prior knowledge of Splaine’s request, also declined to comment.
Ireland failed to win one of the Olympic team places on offer in September’s European Championships, but is in line to take two of the three individual Olympic places on offer, based on rankings that measure the best 30 results from January to March 1 of next year. Denis Lynch has a reasonable lead at the top, but Twomey has been overtaken in second place and, according to Splaine, is “weakened in terms of horsepower”.
Crucially, while individual riders like Twomey and Lynch win the placings, it is Splaine who will select the horse/rider combinations he feels will best perform in the Olympics and, ironically, Army riders and others, such as Cian O’Connor and Conor Swail will be vying for consideration.
