Cork’s Shane Sweetnam made his Olympic debut with Alejandro in the team show jumping competition in Tokyo last Friday after Cian O’Connor withdrew his mount Kilkenny following a nose-bleed in the individual competition.

However, luck was not on Sweetnam’s side as the 12-year-old gelding lost a shoe in the early part of their round when first of the Irish to jump.

Under the controversial new Olympic format, where teams were reduced to just three combinations with no discard score on offer, riders were under severe pressure to complete their rounds regardless of faults.

Alejandro appeared to lose confidence after losing his shoe and despite Sweetnam’s best efforts, the pair failed to complete the course following a fall.

Neither horse or rider suffered any serious injuries and speaking afterwards, Sweetnam explained what happened: “So he [Alejandro]started off well. He was jumping great and coming into the triple combination he pulled a shoe and just really got nervous and unsettled and never really came back from it.

“He is a very experienced horse and normally that wouldn’t happen to him or has never happened to him before and then the way the format is, I had to keep going or try to count and hopefully work our way through it and that didn’t happen.”

Format

Sweetnam also gave his thoughts on the new Olympic team format: “I think the riders have always been against it because in these situations you are forced to have to keep going on when your horse maybe got a bit nervous which shouldn’t be the case. It has always been a Nations Cup style, if you have a drop score you know, horses can go lame between rounds, all this sort of thing.

“It just gives a little bit of cushion and also horsemanship that you can look after your horses on a team and not force them if they don’t need to do it, or they aren’t in the mood for it at that time.”

Withdrawn

With no hope of qualifying a team for the final, the Irish team took the decision not to jump their remaining two combinations (Bertram Allen and Pacino Amiro and Darragh Kenny with VDL Cartello) and to save them for another day.

Sweden took the team gold medal for the first time in almost a century following an exciting jump-off against the US, who had to settle for silver.

Belguim finished on 12 faults to take home the bronze medal.