WHILE Ireland rides the crest of a wave of international show jumping excellence, it is refreshing to find the parts of this year’s Dublin Horse Show that energise Show Director Pat Hanly are the work being done around education and exploring our relationships with horses.

Speaking to The Irish Field just seven days out from Ireland’s biggest equestrian event, Hanly was upbeat about the future of the Show, while acknowledging many ongoing challenges and changes afoot.

“I’ve been coming to the Horse Show for well over 50 years now, I can blame (or thank) my mother for that, and I’ve been doing the show director role now for over 20 years,” he said.

“Over that period so much has changed, the whole thing has morphed, and while there have been periods of decline it has grown very substantially, as has the industry - they feed off each other. Irish breeding is probably the biggest change - we had Irish-breds jumping in the team at the Olympics this year - back in 2000 there weren’t too many people who would believe that could happen.

“The other big change is the performance classes for young event horses, Draughts and Connemaras, and the focus on the broodmare futurity. We have moved to become more specialist in particular areas. That has helped the overall industry and we’re in a much stronger position than we were 20 years ago.

“Part of the mission of the Dublin Horse Show is to support the Irish Sport Horse breeders and producers through showcasing the best Irish-bred horses, and to do that you have to develop classes. Those classes all came from an intention to develop a marketplace for Irish-bred horses, to improve the marketability of the animal and increase the purchase price.

“Another part of the mission is horse welfare, ethical training and effective horsemanship and we’ve had a number of influential trainers come and do masterclasses. This year we have Tristan Tucker coming and I’d encourage anybody who has anything to do with animals to see what he’s doing.

“This all helps us demonstrate the benefits of the horse-human relationship in modern society. We’re also working with the Festina Lente organisation and an occupational therapist called Audrey Darby, who will be on site as well. She works with the concept of neurodiversity and horses and how horses force you to stay in the present.

“In a society which has become increasingly anxious and worried about the future and increasingly depressed about the past, that ability to learn to stay in the present is hugely important for kids.”

Selling the sport

“Another part of the Horse Show’s mission,” Hanly continued, “is promoting international show jumping and bringing Rolex on board this year certainly has helped in that. The teams that will be here next week to jump in the CSI5* classes are really strong so I think that’s been a good move on our behalf.

“I think one of the big challenges equestrianism has is that we’re often not good at explaining the value of the interaction with the animal to the wider public. Our role is to provide a diverse show with all of the different classes and present a unified message of the value of the sport. I don’t think in general that we’re good at that but then when people come here and they experience the Show, they’re absolutely blown away by it. That’s what happened with Rolex last year. They couldn’t understand how they weren’t involved previously and have signed up for an initial five-year term.”

According to Hanly, the enduring appeal of the Dublin Horse Show lies in the variety on offer.

“Everybody will find something that appeals to them. Sometimes it’s the high end, sometimes it’s the breeding, sometimes it’s the social aspect. I think our job is to make sure that we have the best horses in each of the particular sections and then everyone has the opportunity to go on their own journey.

“The horse show also creates jobs up and down the country so there’s a positive economic aspect there - these things are why we’ve been able to keep it here at this unique and special venue, it works on so many levels.”

Social licence

With regard to those who may not see how it all works, Hanley agreed that social licence is something the RDS has been looking at for 15 years now and that the conversation around society’s acceptance of equestrianism can only be a good thing.

“I would see it as a huge opportunity. There has been an incredible amount of money and research spent on questioning human-horse interactions in the last 20 years. It’s going to rewrite a lot of our interaction with animals in a very positive way.

“It’s going to explain to humans very clearly what that incredible value of the animal is. We know the saying about the outside of a horse being good for the inside of a human - by understanding that relationship better, we will be in a much better position to do better by the animal.”

Putting on a show

Hanly explained that putting on the horse show is an enormous feat of organisation and manpower, none of which would be possible without a loyal team of staff, volunteers and the RDS committee itself.

“At the end of every show, there’s a review period and the equestrian committee will sit down to review the competitions what went well, maybe what didn’t go so well, what were the challenges, and try and come up with a programme for the next year. Then we look at how the operation worked, all with the catering, security, all of those different things, and make our plan for the next year’s show.

“Staffing in the last number of years has been a big challenge. We’re incredibly lucky that we have a very loyal band of volunteers, stewards, doctors, vets, course builders - all of those people come together to run the show and if we didn’t have them, it just wouldn’t happen. I couldn’t overestimate the impact of that voluntary side.”

Anglesea Stand

2024 will likely be the last time the main arena will look as it does now thanks to a €50 million plan to rebuild the Anglesea stand and terrace. “It’s a very exciting project,” said Hanly. “One of the unique parts is that it is dual aspect so it looks out onto the rings and also out onto the main arena. From that perspective, it’ll be a huge enhancement to the Show. It’s a cantilever structure, so you have a lower floor and an upper floor in it and the sight lines will be absolutely superb.

“We hopefully will have it complete in 2026 and, subject to everything falling into place, 2024 will be the last time we’re using the existing stand. The stand itself won’t be available in 2025 but we will be making arrangements to ensure that we’re able to use the main arena to host international show jumping.”