In recent years, underage Irish eventing teams have delivered great success, with pony, junior and young rider teams all bringing home a host of team and individual medals from European Championships.

Hoping to continue that rich vein of success, Horse Sport Ireland recently announced the appointments of three team managers for Ireland’s youth eventing high performance programme.

Having been at the helm for many of those successes, Becky Cullen will remain in place as Irish pony high performance team manager. In 2017 Cullen’s team claimed bronze at the European Championships and last year she went one better as the team claimed silver and Sophie Foyle won an individual silver medal.

Dag Albert has been appointed as junior high performance team manager. Albert is one of Sweden’s most experienced event riders and represented his country at pony, junior and young rider level. He then progressed to compete in the senior ranks and competed at Badminton and Burghley international horse trials in the UK as well as representing Sweden at European and World Championships, and the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996 and Beijing in 2008.

Ireland’s Sue Shortt is the new young rider high performance team manager. Not only has Shortt represented Ireland through the underage ranks she also competed at the World Equestrian Games in Jerez, Spain as well as the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000 and Athens in 2004.

Shortt had great success as the Irish pony team high performance manager from 2005 until 2013. She subsequently went to China where she was team manager and rider for the Yulong Provincial team.

Any underage riders interested in taking part in the Irish youth high performance programme this season can download the expression of interest form which is available on the Eventing Ireland website.