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Irish Independent
7 days ago
- Sport
- Irish Independent
Bertram Allen part of determined effort to secure medal as Ireland show jumpers finish fourth
Clear rounds from senior championship debutant Seamus Hughes-Kennedy and Darragh Kenny helped Michael Blake's outfit finish on a total of 12.39 faults, an agonising 4.2 faults off Germany and bronze. Gold in the team class went to Belgium, who began the day in third. Gilles Thomas sealed the deal with a raised fist before his horse, Ermitage Kalone, had touched the ground after clearing the last. They finished on 5.61 faults, with overnight leaders Great Britain taking silver, on 7.96. In the end, the Green Jackets needed more mistakes from the leading three nations, having jumped from seventh to fourth after the first of the two Nations Cup rounds on Thursday. The margins are tiny at this rarefied level but there were positives everywhere, with Denis Lynch and Kenny fulfilling their end of the bargain as the wise heads of the team with four clear rounds between them, while 22-year-old whizz kid Hughes-Kennedy flourished in his first major championships, as did his ten-year-old horse. Meanwhile, Bertram Allen, a member of the last Irish team to win gold at the Europeans along with Lynch in Gothenburg in 2017 when he was only 22, clearly has a talented performer on his hands in the shape of Ballywalter Stables' Qonquest de Rigo. Just nine, the gelding only had one fence down in each of three rounds and is sure to benefit from the experience. Lynch and Vistogrand, the twelve-year-old he owns under the Tipperary's Finest stallion banner, justified their eleventh hour elevation to the team with two clears in the opening rounds. The Tipperary pilot, a selector of the under-age squads that took the European Youth Championships by storm one week earlier, was so close to adding a third, but a slight rub at the middle part of the gold-colour triple combination toppled the top plank and left him with four faults and a personal tally of 6.32, which dropped him to 24th individually. That heaped the pressure on Hughes-Kennedy, who like Lynch had been flawless to this juncture despite being at the very opposite end of the scale in terms of experience. ADVERTISEMENT The scion of an esteemed Irish equestrian family has been pinpointed as a star of the future for some time but has been making waves in Nations Cups and Grands Prix in recent months, jumping a double clear as Ireland won in La Baule. The Kilkenny native stamped himself firmly as an athlete capable of campaigning at the very highest level, making light of the enormity of the round with the horse he has produced since Rocky was three. It was a stunning effort by horse and rider. Qonquest illustrated all his scope under Allen but unfortunately had the same obstacle as Vistogrand down. He recovered well under the expert guidance of his Wexford navigator to limit the damage. A clear was needed from Kenny and Eddy Blue to have any chance of making the podium and the Offaly Olympian duly obliged with his 13-year-old partner never even looking like touching a rail. That cemented fourth and Blake hailed the efforts of his riders and their support staff. 'You would love to win a medal and that's what we came here for but I am so proud of the riders for the efforts they put in and the rounds they jumped,' he said. 'They all did a really good job. Obviously, what Seamus has done and the whole story of how his uncles bred the horse, his mother owns it and he has produced it while he is only a young man himself is incredible. 'You always knew he had talent but I just wanted to introduce him gradually but there comes a time when you have to give them their head. When they're ready they're ready! Huge credit must go to Ger O'Neill, who took him under his wing and he has really benefited from that. 'But all four riders did a good job and I do think Bertram's horse will come on a lot for the experience. Major championships are very hard for nine-year-olds. He will have learned a lot from that. 'Apart from the riders, I want to thank the owners, the grooms, the vets and all the support staff. It wouldn't happen without them and while they might not get the profile and the headlines, their efforts are truly appreciated. 'And I want to thank Horse Sport Ireland too, who give us everything we need and continue to be a great support as we compete at the highest level around the world.'
RTÉ News
26-06-2025
- Sport
- RTÉ News
'We let our nation down' - Paris pain fuelling Irish equestrian Olympic ambitions
Barely a day goes by without Michael Blake casting his mind back to the Olympic Games in Paris and what might have been. Horse Sport Ireland's high performance show jumping director led a fancied Irish team to the French capital – or to the resplendent Chateau de Versailles to be more precise – with serious ambitions of a podium place. "We were talked up a lot more than we talked ourselves up. We knew we were there or thereabouts," he tells RTÉ Sport. Results all season backed up such talk. An unprecedented season of success produced 11 Nations Cup podium results, including a couple of five-star triumphs in Florida and Aachen. Shane Sweetnam, Daniel Coyle and Cian O'Connor comfortably qualified for the final, a testing 1.65m course over 525m, with expectation surpassing hope in landing a historic first team show jumping medal. Despite a second stunning clear round by Coyle and his 14-year-old mare Legacy, Ireland finished seventh after a tally of 14 penalties. Nearly a year on, Blake is still processing the result. "We knew things that needed to go our way," he says. "They did right until the last horse was going in. We were in line for silver medal, which was going to be fantastic. And it just didn't go our way. "We're bitterly disappointed that we let our nation down. There was great expectation and we had great expectations. If you look at the countries that won the medals, they hadn't had any luck look before or since." "We wanted to do our best and we've bounced back before. We've bounced back now." Blake's confidence stems from victory in two Nations Cups in two different continents within five days, along with a five-star cup in Abu Dhabi Earlier this month Ireland emerged as winners of the five-star Nations Cup of France in La Baule, just the third time an Irish team has succeeded in the prestigious event. Blake mixed youth and experience - Bertram Allen, Seamus Hughes Kennedy, Tom Wachman and Cian O'Connor – a policy that he has implemented since assuming his role in 2012. "If you look at all the wins, there's no common person on any of the three teams," he says. "I started in 2012 and I looked at our bases and it was like a cone going backwards. "I've created a monster. People say, 'oh well, you didn't win the last Europeans'. But we were second and we were second with kids. I chose not to bring the A team, I suppose, for want of a better word, because I wanted to see what the emerging talent could do. "The big win in La Baule, I had two kids on it with two young horses. It's not winning that makes me most proud." Blake's approach may have caught some by surprise, but the strength-in-depth of the Irish squad is there for all to see. The Clare native says it was about making clear to everyone the long-term vision; only selecting the best riders would not serve the team well down the line. "I inherited the situation where there was a hierarchy. And the first thing to do was to tear it down. There was no resentment from the senior riders but I just saw things differently, that if we didn't keep adding to the talent pool that soon we were going to run out. "And I see other countries have made that mistake, that have stuck with the same gene pool, all the time, and now there are countries like Sweden, Switzerland, are running into difficulty now, and they were powerhouses." "Our senior riders, they mentor the younger riders. And it's great to see because we sit down at the beginning of the year, we try and make a plan for the whole year. "As I tell everybody, you might be a brain surgeon some day, but you have to go to university and go through the steps. That's what I have tried to instil on people, that there is a progression, and that when you miss a step on that ladder, you usually come falling down." It's a welcome headache for Blake to plot out team selections, but Dublin, Aachen, Rome and Barcelona are staging posts to the big prize. Five-star wins in Canada and France have backed up the work behind the scenes, but Los Angeles in three years' time is focusing the mind. "We hadn't won in Spruce Meadows (Canada) for 24 years, we targeted that. Now I need to target the elusive Olympics. I've been lucky enough, we've won the European championships, we've been second in the European championships. "There's only the [Olympic] circles. That's what I'm after."
Irish Examiner
26-06-2025
- Sport
- Irish Examiner
Elusive Olympic success driving Ireland's consistent world beaters
Even now, hurling percolates Michael Blake's world. Brought up in Tuamgraney in East Clare, it's close to fifty decades since the high performance director of Ireland's hugely successful show jumping team put away the hurley and concentrated on the saddle. He remembers well his time at St Flannan's when the Ennis college ended 18 years without a Harty Cup in 1976, and the golden period that followed as they lost two finals and came through again in 1979. Clare's resurrection in the 1990s elicits relief and some regrets. 1996 and the loss to Limerick. The Offaly protest in '98. Ach! This background bubbles to the surface time and again, even when the conversation revolves exclusively around a day job that has seen Ireland enjoy an extraordinary run of success at some of show jumping's most illustrious of events around the world. In recent weeks alone, Irish teams have won two Nations Cups on different continents within five days having already won a prestigious Longines League of Nations Cup event on a third, in Abu Dhabi, only last February. All with completely different riders. This week sees the team in Aachen to defend another prestigious title. Ireland's recent podium finish rate has ballooned to almost 80%. They had eleven Nations Cup podiums last year alone. Other countries would sit in and around the 40% mark. The one fly in this ointment is the inability to get over the line in the biggest of the big ones. They lost the World Championships by six-hundredths of a second. What Blake refers to as an 'eyelash'. A team of Shane Sweetnam, Daniel Coyle and Cian O'Connor couldn't build on a perfect platform on the final day at last year's Olympics in Paris when coming in seventh. Here comes one of those hurling analogies. 'We need to put it in the net all the time,' said Blake. 'I know that's hard to do, but we should put it in the net nine times out of 10 because now we have that kind of ability. We almost have that kind of structure and depth. The constant winning should be soon normal.' He knows better than anyone the tiny margins involved. Working with animals brings with it an added and obvious layer of the unexpected. A horse can step on a stone, or be sold by an owner, and everything can change. Ireland named their squad two weeks earlier than others for the Games, in case of any objections lodged over team selections. How problematic is that? Well, says Blake, Limerick wouldn't name their team seven weeks before an All-Ireland, would they? 'We're bitterly disappointed that we let our nation down. We wanted to do our best and we've bounced back before and after. We've bounced back now. We're the only country in the world that have two five-star wins up this year and so we can't be too bad.' This ability to win often and with multiple riders isn't a fluke. Blake reckons Ireland can call on a pool of riders that may be as large as 30 while powerhouses such as Sweden and Switzerland are struggling having stuck with the same, small gene pool. 'I've created a monster,' he laughed when asked about the selection headaches involved. It's a base he started to build at underage levels back in 2012. Young riders were backed and encouraged to pack their knapsacks and go off and build resilience and careers. They went from being big fish in a small pond here to minnows abroad. A young rider's academy was set up at home in support. They were educated on everything from conduct, to how to get an owner, media training, veterinary, accounting and how to get a lorry licence. All skills essential to this most unique of sporting careers. 'Being able to ride the horse is very important, but it's 50% at most.' The Nations Cup title claimed in La Baule earlier this month was won with two young riders, Seamus Hughes Kennedy and Tom Wachman, riding two young horses. All performed admirably. Blake likens it to minor players mixing it with the big boys. Hughes Kennedy is a 23-year old who, he said, has come from nowhere to be 'the new Ronaldo in this world'. The really exciting part in all this is how much better again this new generation will be when the time comes to tackle the next Games in LA in 2028. There is plenty to be done, and won, before then. Blake speaks of his love for Aachen and Rome and La Baule and a Dublin event that he describes as the Mecca. But that elusive Olympic medal exercises his mind constantly. 'There's only them [Olympic] circles,' he admitted. 'That's what I'm after.'
