According to Ireland’s high performance eventing team manager and chef d’equipe Sally Corscadden, the 12 short listed contenders for the four places on our Olympic squad for next summer’s Tokyo Olympics are keeping in touch and continuing to work hard during the ongoing Covid-19 lockdown.

“Our riders are doing weekly performance analysis through video links with their coaches and are practicing new tests. In terms of our horses, the postponement of Tokyo is not too bad. With a lot of new horses coming through, we will not have the same team of mounts that qualified at the World Equestrian Games (WEG). So the extra year is not really a negative for us,” she says.

Ever since our very first Olympic eventing bid back in 1952, our hunt for medals has been one of courage and innovation against the odds. Withdrawals, eliminations even deadly floods have gotten in the way of success.

Elusive medals

Though team medals have eluded us, we have always been competitive. During the 10 competitions our teams have managed to finish we have never been outside the top 10 out of an average entry of 18 nations. Also of note is that in most instances we were placing behind teams that were largely mounted on Irish-bred horses.

The story of our early outings have been brilliantly recorded in Sidney J. Watson’s well researched book Three Days Full. This Tipperary man had huge enthusiasm for the sport. This is something he has certainly passed on to his world silver medallist son John and to his grandson Sam, who is now a contender for a place on our Tokyo squad.

According to Sidney, our best team place to date was at Tokyo in 1964 when the side of Tommy Brennan, Tony Cameron, Harry Freeman-Jackson and John Harty came fourth – just 13.87 penalties away from a bronze medal. Of the 18 horses that finished on that occasion eight were Irish-breds and all four of those on the gold medal Italian team came from here.

Down the years we have had sixth placings at both Helsinki and Rome, while more recently we slotted into fifth at London 2012.

Perhaps in the long run Tokyo will eventually be lucky for us and get us into the medals for the very first time. In the meantime, Corscadden notes that three or four of her short listed dozen still have to qualify as individuals in order to be eligible for our qualified team. She hopes that events which can be rescheduled later this year and Tattersalls in 2021 will facilitate that.

Above all else we hope that Tokyo will happen and that her selected side will be in contention for one of those elusive medals.