No business like showjumping

Cian O'Connor has put the Athens controversy behind him and is looking forward to fresh Olympic challenges, he tells Eileen Battersby.

Sunday evening, shortly after 6pm. It's February, cold and dark. Three trucks, two of which are towing additional trailers, pull out in convoy on to the main road. These are heavy loads, carrying enough equipment, food, water containers, bedding and other supplies to sustain a small army. There is a military precision: every member of the team knows their role and every movement appears planned, deliberate. Olympic rider Cian O'Connor is taking 18 horses to Spain for the six-week Sunshine Tour, the start of his competition season. With him are several members of his staff, including one of his professional riders and two students, one of whom is amateur competitor Aileen Bryan.

Among the horses O'Connor has with him are several proven international and world-class competitors, as well as young Grand Prix prospects. His current top horses, which he intends to put forward for Super League Nations Cup selection this year, are the opinionated chestnut mare, Irish Independent Echo Beach, by Clover Echo, who jumped three double clear rounds last season for the Irish team, and the exciting Danish-bred gelding, Complete, who last season jumped double clear to help Ireland win the Nations Cup in Poland.

O'Connor will be riding nine of the horses. He owns two of the horse lorries, and has rented the third. The convoy is headed for Dublin port and a sea crossing to Holyhead, followed by a drive down through England to a yard in Dover, where they will stable for 12 hours. The following morning they will travel by sea from Dover to Calais and stable again at Poitiers. There will be two further stops, at Dax and Madrid, where the horses will be unloaded, walked and stabled, before arriving at Montenmedio Equestrian Centre in Vejer de la Frontera.

The Sunshine Tour sounds more like something undertaken by golfers and tennis players, but trips like this are vital in the making of a world-class showjumper. It is a long apprenticeship; at an age at which most racehorses have long since retired, good showjumpers mature. The Sunshine Tour provides the preparation for the summer season.

"At this time of the year there is no outdoor competition in Ireland," says O'Connor, "so many competitors head for circuits like this. It's a great schooling ground for young horses and ideal preparation for the established horses."

On Saturday afternoon, just 24 hours earlier, O'Connor's Karlswood Stables, at Waterside Stud, Tara, Co Meath, appears calm. Aside from the bales of wood shavings ready to be loaded, there is no sign of the next evening's departure. The electronic gates open and there is a choice of two main directions: one road leads to the livery yard with several stable blocks, the other to the barn which houses O'Connor's international string. The yard is ordered, spacious and well- landscaped.

There is an indoor arena as well as two outdoor arenas, including a lunge area, a horse walker and a variety of paths and gallops for exercising horses. Previously home to the late Paul Darragh, O'Connor has been renting the yard for the past 18 months It is a good base, close to Dublin, the airport and O'Connor's home, which is about 10 minutes away.

"Come see my horses," he says, leading the way in from the vicious winter wind. One by one he introduces an elite group of horses, all beautiful and each meticulously groomed, clipped and wearing tartan stable rugs over yellow, red and black woollen fleeces. Complete is lying down in his stable. Now 11, he is a warmblood and was bred in Denmark, although O'Connor saw him in the US and bought him there on behalf of a syndicate.

A challenging but extremely talented horse to ride, Complete is in a good mood and enjoys having O'Connor sit down beside him to rub his ears. Also 11, but far less affable, is Echo Beach, "a Paddy" who is standing in the aisle, being groomed by Clement, the chief groom, who is French. O'Connor passes down the row of horses, introducing rising stars such as the eight-year-old German chestnut mare, Baloufina, which he bought recently at auction from showjumper Paul Schockemöhle, who bred her.

Next is Arabella, a five-year-old bay mare who looks like Waterford Crystal. "She was bred in Kilkenny by Andy Hughes. I'm very excited by her. I saw her competing with Sheila White over a metre course and thought the horse had star quality." How could he tell over such low jumps? "Well, I haven't been proven right yet. She's only five, but a month after I bought her she won the four-year-old championship at a national event. It's a long road in this sport; it's all hopes, dreams and instinct, but I do believe she'll go all the way."

O'CONNOR WALKS DOWNthe aisle and directs his grooms as to which horses are going to the arena for schooling, which are going for a hack or just to be walked. About six steps faster than everyone else, he is quick-witted, highly organised, obviously driven, but he appears a cheerful character, shrewd, naturally bossy, enthusiastic and competitive. One minute he is explaining the finer points of jumping technique, and the next he's like a kid intent on dismantling the family car.

He is 28, and since competing his first Grand Prix horse, Normandy, in 1999, has competed in more than 55 Nations Cups for Ireland. "There is nothing like competing for your country on a team - there's a great sense of national pride and when we win a Nations Cup and see the tricolour being raised, that's when you realise all the hard graft is worthwhile. It's so exciting, there's so much pressure, you don't want to let the other three riders down."

Currently looking to the London Olympics, he is searching the world for the horse that will get him there.

"We have to plan now, we need the horses," he says. "Ireland has some of the best riders in the world but not the kind of horses, in my opinion, that will win Olympic medals."

There will be no Irish showjumping team in Beijing as Ireland failed to qualify, although there may be a rider in the individual event. O'Connor stresses how difficult it is to find an Olympic horse.

"Horse Sport Ireland is a new organisation representing all aspects of equestrian sport. I believe this can only be good and should bring unity and efficiency to our sport, but it will take time. The Irish Horse Board has introduced incentives encouraging Irish breeders and this is going well."

O'Connor is a businessman. "I buy and sell horses in order to finance my showjumping. I teach. I have a staff of 10. I realised I had to really approach my sport like a business so as to afford to have people help me. It had come to the stage when I was doing so much of the practical stuff, even the office work, I hardly had time to ride."

His operation has become much bigger since the Olympics in Athens. "I aim to buy and sell about 40 horses a year. Often that means bringing on a good young horse, training it and then selling it on. I had a very good four-year-old last year, the leading four-year-old in Ireland - the Army bought him."

When O'Connor says he needs a great horse for the Olympics in 2012, he really means he needs two or "ideally three". This is logic, not fantasy. "You need two or three very good horses and one of those should be good enough to sell in order to part-finance the other one or two. I am hoping to attract investors in Irish showjumping. It would be fantastic to have an Irish team in London. It's perfect, it's nearby, it should be easier to get an enthusiastic sponsor.

"There's always been this great rivalry between Irish and British showjumping teams. There may be a businessman out there who'd jump - excuse the pun - at the chance of sponsoring a horse. It all needs massive planning as well as money, and of course the horses."

Irish showjumping has moved away from its traditional foundation, the Irish thoroughbred crossed with the Irish draught horse. With the introduction of European warmbloods from Germany, Belgium, France and the Netherlands, the showjumping horse has become lighter, there is far more blood, and many of them even look like thoroughbreds.

"The sport has changed a lot, the courses are more technical, the fence material is lighter, the depth of the cups that hold the pole is more shallow," says O'Connor. Sometimes even the air current created by a horse clearing a jump is capable of knocking a pole.

BACK OUTSIDE, A grey horse, draped in an exercise rug, luxurious silver tail fanning out behind him, is being walked. It is Casper, the famous puissance horse. He is 16, beautiful, and glances at us, expecting a camera. "I retired him at Olympia at Christmas. He went very well, but I thought he had done enough and it was the right time. I always know when it's time to retire a horse. Now he'll be ridden most days, but he won't be competing internationally again."

Waterford Crystal, now 17, retired last September and is living on a stud farm in Co Kildare. An Olympic horse is difficult to replace. Has he one in the making? "I don't know, I'm not sure. An international horse is one thing, a horse that can win indoor world cups is another, but an Olympic horse capable of winning a medal is something else again - that's what made Waterford Crystal so special. He has a great brain, he's very athletic, his biggest hassle was his small feet, which sometimes caused leg problems and it was difficult keeping him sound . . . Of all the fuss about the Olympic thing, I've always thought it was unfair people didn't realise how good he was. He didn't just happen in Athens, he was no one-trick pony."

In 2002, two years before the Athens Olympics, Waterford Crystal was the leading horse in the world. In the weeks prior to the games, the German gelding, by Landgraf out of a French mare, had a double clear round in the Grand Prix in Rome, went double clear in the Nations Cup in Rome and then, two weeks later, had another double clear in the Nations Cup at Aachen. O'Connor was not surprised when Waterford Crystal won in Athens. "I had thought he'd be in the medals. Showjumping is funny - it gets relatively little coverage unless there is a scandal or one of the top four riders does or says something controversial."

People will watch the Aga Khan or the Olympics, but they don't hear that much about the international circuit. "Racing is high-profile. I suppose betting involves the wider public. But it's so different: a jockey gets injured and another jockey will take his place, and the horse will probably still win - but this wouldn't happen in showjumping as the relationship between the horse and rider can often take a long time to develop."

Many people think that showjumping is all down to the horse, he points out, but the horse's performance is determined by the physical signals and prompts given by the rider. "Otherwise any man in the street could get up on, say, Complete, and jump a 5ft fence. It is unlikely that a competent amateur rider with a couple of years' experience would be able to handle a highly charged international horse for more than a few yards. Top riders are not only very physically fit but they have built up a tremendous amount of riding hours in order to handle such powerful horses."

Waterford Crystal was nine years old and prominent on the German national circuit with a good female rider when O'Connor first heard about him. "It was about this time, eight years ago, a friend told me about him and I saw a video of him jumping. I went to Germany and I rode him and, well . . ."

ACCORDING TOA close friend of O'Connor's, John Floody, a competition rider based at Newgrange Stud in Co Meath, who trains young horses, often for O'Connor, Waterford Crystal was that one-in-a-million horse, "an Olympic horse, one that could complete five rounds at Olympic level. He will be very difficult to replace, but that's what you need to get to the Olympics, never mind win."

The triumph in Athens ended in a well-documented positive drug test and a Fédération Équestre Internationale (FEI) oral hearing, which subsequently cleared O'Connor.

"I'm looking forward to London," O'Connor says. "I don't want to go back on all of that. The international federation [FEI] cleared me of any wrongdoing and I accept the rules, didn't lie down and die. I'm still here. The drug controls are very important - as soon as we arrive in any new stables at a stop during the journey or at a competition, no matter where it is, we disinfect the feed buckets and troughs just in case there is any residue of medication from a previous horse. We bring our own feed and haylage. You can't take chances."

Drugs in sport are a fact of life, yet if anabolic steroid abuse may make a 10- second sprinter run 9.7, does such cheating "work" with horses? Is there any drug that will make an international horse jump at a world-class level?

"No, definitely not. I believe that in the majority of positive medication cases, most riders unintentionally slip into doping traps. Often a horse needs medication for an injury and it is sometimes difficult to gauge exactly when that will fully clear his system.

"The FEI is trying to improve its medication control programme as many riders are being branded as cheats when, in my opinion, in most cases, they are only looking out for the welfare of their horse. I think that, as a rule, people have a good sense of fair play in our sport."

In the case of horses, drug abuse appears to be more about "performance enabling" than "enhancing". In the story of Waterford Crystal, a slow-release human drug, unlicensed for equine use, was administered as a sedative before hydrotherapy treatment for a minor fetlock injury, during a five-week out-of-competition period. This treatment cost O'Connor his gold medal.

The FEI accepted that the drug, which is commonly used in Australia when transporting horses by air, had been administered for therapeutic purposes and did not enhance the horse's performance. If O'Connor is bitter, he doesn't seem so, but admits he has had tough times.

"Well, you find out who your friends are," he says. "There will be other Olympics. I've already been to one and I know what it's about - that's why I'm aiming for London. We have the riders but we need the horses, and I'm hoping Irish showjumping will be given the support."