Green, White
and Going
for Gold

To meet the ultimate objective of winning Olympic Gold, Team Ireland’s Eventing High Performance plan must balance the support of top-performing horses and riders who can deliver (and qualify) in the short to medium term, with maintaining a pipeline of up-and-coming combinations who show the potential to improve and deliver in the long term.

At the helm of this performance plan is Corscadden, who was appointed to the role in 2017 following a successful tenure as High Performance Manager for the Young Rider squad - racking up an impressive five European Championship medals over four years.

Corscadden has built a formidable High Performance squad of athletes, allocating them to either the 2018 WEG Squad - combinations that are committed to and are capable of delivering a competitive performance at the 2018 FEI World Equestrian Games™ in Tryon and contribute to qualification for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics; or the 2020 Horizon Squad - combinations that are committed to and are capable of future championship performances, and who are specifically planning towards the Olympics in Tokyo.

The size of the squad, and the calibre of the athletes on the squad, leads to a hopeful outlook for the performance of Team Ireland both in 2018 through the FEI Eventing Nations™ Cup and onto WEG - and subsequently onward to Tokyo 2020.

This sentiment is echoed by Corscadden, who noted “what’s ideal for me, is that it is going to be hard for me to pick a team” - and even the athletes themselves.

Ciaran Glynn, a 2018 WEG squad athlete, said: “If it’s very difficult to make the Irish team to WEG, that is a very, very great thing for the sport in Ireland.”

Supporting the execution of Corscadden’s plan are Performance Coaches Ian Woodhead (Dressage) and Ian Fearon (Jumping), who train the squad as a team on a regular basis. On top of this, each athlete has set their own individual goals and performance plans, and will continue to work toward those performance plans with their coaches outside of the regular team training.

With the emphasis moving back toward the cross-country, the team are really focusing on this phase in their training, and Corscadden has asked her riders to go out and do a four-star event (Kentucky, Badminton, Lumuhlen) to ensure they are capable of running confidently should a challenging three-star present itself, as was the case at Rio 2016.

But Ireland’s riders aren’t just putting in the training, they’re also backing up the homework with results.

This year has seen some incredible results for Irish riders so far at both international three and four star level - with a number of wins and top ten finishes, despite the late start to the Eventing season following inclement weather and poor ground conditions.

At three star level, Chatsworth proved a very successful outing for the Irish, particularly for Cathal Daniels who won two CIC3* classes with his horses Rioghan Rua and Sammy Davis Junior. Sam Watson, Sarah Ennis, Austin O’Connor and Michelle Kenny also impressed.

At four-star level, Irish riders showed strong form at Badminton, with Padraig McCarthy and Mr Chunky finishing best of the Irish in eighth position, Joseph Murphy close behind in 13th position with Sportsfield Othello, and completions from Glynn (who competed two horses this year) and Alan Nolan.

A review of the rest of the team’s results through 2017 and so far in 2018 shows a number of top 10 finishes at international three star level for many of the remaining athletes on the squad, including Clare Abbott (Euro Prince), Jonty Evans (Cooley Rorkes Drift), James O’Haire (China Doll) and Trish Ryan (Dunrath Eclipse) - signalling a squad that is performing consistently at a high level, and moreover a very tough decision ahead for Corscadden.

According to Ian Woodhead, the Dressage performance coach, when it comes to deciding the final team for WEG, it will be all eyes on the qualified combinations, watching closely for their results, and more importantly the trajectory of improvement - ensuring the combinations that will ‘peak’ at just the right time are selected for the team.