Ireland qualify for final team round despite slipping to ninth

Ireland has qualified for Friday’s final team round at the European show jumping championships in Aachen but has slipped down a place to ninth of the remaining 10 nations on a converted score of 17.960.

In front of their home crowd, Germany, who led after yesterday’s opening speed competition, has dropped to third on 8.400 behind France (5.700) and The Netherlands (8.400) who both returned a zero score on Thursday. The reigning champions, Britain, are on 10.990 in fourth spot but, importantly, lead those nations who have yet to qualify for next year’s Olympics with Ireland now in fifth place in that category.

In the individual rankings, France's Penelope Leprevost (Flora de Mariposa) remains in pole position with another good clear and she is followed still by Ludger Beerbaum of Germany (0.75), Britain's Joe Clee (1.00) and Belgium's Gregory Wathelet (1.04).

Bertram Allen, who was first of the Irish to jump today, had a pole down with Molly Malone V and dropped from fifth to 20th (5.06) while, next to go, Greg Broderick picked up eight faults with MHS Going Global, which saw him slip to 48th from lying 25th overnight.

In contrast, the other two Irish riders improved their positions. Cian O’Connor was lucky not to have the last fence down with the big jumping Good Luck to move up to the spot vacated by Broderick from 52nd and, while the same fence caught out Denis Lynch with All Star 5, he moved up the leaderboard from 62nd to 43rd of the 90 starters in Thursday’s competition.