From bareback pony to gold

EQUESTRIAN: Grania Willis charts Dermott Lennon's emergence as an international star. Dermott Lennon, who yesterday claimed individual gold in a thrilling change-horse final at the World Equestrian Games in Jerez, Spain, has shot from international obscurity to the top of the world in the last three years.

Born into farming family in Loughbrickland, Co Down, 33 years ago, Lennon started riding at the age of six on a pony without a saddle or bridle.

"We weren't horsey people," Lennon explains, "but we had the pony for rounding up the cattle and my brother Cathal and I used to ride it. We were stone mad and it was probably to my detriment, because then I had to learn to ride properly."

The saddle and bridle came later, but it took a while for the finesse to be added.

Having been given the ride on Terence and Mary Harvey's home-bred four-year-old mare Liscalgot in 1995, Lennon added her to the string of youngsters that he trucked around Ireland on the national showjumping circuit, but it wasn't until 1999 that Lennon moved up into the international sphere.

Travelling to the Spanish sunshine tour that spring with Paul Darragh, his mentor, Lennon took Liscalgot out for her first international experience. And it was while competing in Vejer de la Frontera, only down the road from Jerez, that Lennon saw baseball caps advertising the 2002 World Games.

Barbara Allen, daughter of Woods Rosbotham - one of the three Northern Ireland businessmen who bought the mare from the Harveys earlier this year - offered to buy one of the caps for Lennon. But he turned down the offer, prophesising that he would be in Jerez 2002 and he would win gold there.

The road to Jerez has not been an easy one, but Lennon's first cap, in the Greek Nations Cup in Athens at the end of 1999, was a winning debut. And the victories continued to pour in during the millennium season when Lennon and Liscalgot played a major role in the record 10 Nations Cup triumphs for the Irish team.

Foot-and-mouth threatened to close down all international travel at the beginning of last year, so Lennon upped sticks and moved his string of horses to Bemmel in Holland, coincidentally only 20 minutes away from Arnhem where he was to lead the Irish to team gold at the European championships four months later.

Teamed with Peter Charles, Kevin Babington and Jessica Kurten, Lennon obliterated the European challenge, but an individual medal eluded him and his sixth place in the individual line-up wrankled.

But the success of Arnhem, plus victory in the Modena Grand Prix at the Pavarotti International, the Stockholm Grand Prix and team wins in the Hickstead and Calgary Nations Cups had made Liscalgot a very valuable piece of property. Terence and Mary Harvey were being bombarded with offers for the mare and there was talk of open chequebooks.

But Lennon was determined that he wouldn't lose the ride and, after months of protracted negotiations, a deal was finally brokered in March of this year when a three-man syndicate of northern businessmen Woods Rosbotham, James Acheson and Sam Thompson stumped up a huge amount of cash to secure the mare's future with Lennon.

The syndicate's confidence in the duo was justified when Liscalgot won both the World Cup eliminator and the World Cup qualifier itself at Dortmund, but the mare was then hit with a low grade virus and was never really firing on all cylinders during the summer.

That was all wiped out in Jerez this weekend though, with Liscalgot - back to her brilliant best - jumping two superb clears in the team decider to boost Lennon to sixth in the individual rankings. With no discard score following Cian O'Connor's crashing first round fall, the team ended a disappointing seventh, but Lennon's gold-fever was about to be cured.

Superb performances from Kevin Babington and Peter Charles in Saturday's last qualifier meant all three Irish posted top 10 places, but Lennon - in fourth place - was through to the final and, with champion written all over him from the outset yesterday, he secured the gold medal that he had set his sights on three years ago on his international debut.