No real surprises as Irish Olympic eventing team announced

Given recent results, there are no great surprises among those nominated on Thursday for the Olympic eventing team by Horse Sport Ireland's high performance manager, Nick Turner.

In alphabetical order the riders are Clare Abbott with Cormac McKay's home-bred Euro Prince, Jonty Evans with his own and Fiona Elliot's Cooley Rorke's Drift, Mark Kyle with Shelagh and Richard Morley's Jemilla and Padraig McCarthy who has a choice to make between the Polish-bred Simon Porloe and the Dutch Warmblood mare Bernadette Utopia.

Abbott, a part-time Maths teacher, still lives in Hillsborough, Co Down while the other three are all based in England.

Name as travelling reserve is Co Kildare’s Camilla Speirs with Portersize Just A Jiff, the 16-year-old Connemara/thoroughbred cross gelding on which she finished ninth at Badminton early last month.

At Tattersalls international horse trials last weekend, Speirs withdrew the diminutive bay gelding after the dressage phase of the CIC3* class but the other three went on to compete with McCarthy winning on Simon Porloe, Evans finishing third, Kyle fourth and Abbott sixth.

Speaking after Thursday’s announcement Turner said: “This has been a very difficult decision to make as there have been an impressive number of combinations who have produced some fantastic results to date. We will be fielding a very competitive squad in Rio.

"I would like to thank all of the owners that made their horses available for selection. We will be working hard over the next 57 days in the lead up to the Summer Olympic Games in Rio to contend for a podium finish."