SARAH Slattery’s international para dressage career continued its rapid upward trajectory in 2024. The Team Ireland Grade V rider described her first international season in 2023 as “a whirlwind” and followed it with a dream para dressage debut at 2024 Paris Paralympic Games.
Team selection was on the mind of all the Irish international para dressage riders at the start of the 2024 season. Sarah Slattery and her 16-year-old Pferdezuchtverband Brandenburg-Anhalt mare Savona started their year scoring 70.925% for a top five placing in the Grade V Grand Prix Freestyle at the Belgian CPEDI3* in Waregem in the middle of April.
The 34-year-old took the year off her day job as a beauty therapist to concentrate on getting to Paris. Sarah and Savona placed fourth in the Grade V Grand Prix A class at Hartpury in July and, a week later, they were nominated by Para Dressage High Performance director Debora Pijpers, along with Michael Murphy and Cleverboy (Grade I), Kate Kerr Horan and Serafina (Grade III), Jessica McKenna and Davidoff 188 (Grade III), as part of the Team Ireland quartet for the Paralympic Games.
With her original selection, Serafina T, ruled out after suffering a minor setback while preparing for the Games, Horse Sport Ireland announced in August that Tokyo Paralympian Kate Kerr-Horan would compete in Paris on her reserve horse, Lykkebo’s Don Akino - the combination that had placed third in the Grade III Grand Prix Freestyle in Hartpury the previous month.
Jessica McKenna was selected for her Paralympic debut with Davidoff 188, the 14-year-old Oldenburg gelding that placed seventh in Tokyo with Denmark’s Caroline Ceceille Nielsen, after a top four finish in the Grade III Grand Prix Freestyle at Hartpury CPEDI3*.
Double world bronze and European silver medallist Michael Murphy and the 17-year-old KWPN Vivaldi gelding Cleverboy completed a hat-trick of wins at Addington CPEDI3* in an impressive start to their 2024 international season in March. They maintained their successful campaign for Paris Paralympics team selection, with good placings and consistent scores of 70% and above in Waregem, Belgium and at the British CPEDI3* shows in Hartpury and Wellington Heckfield in June and July respectively.
In August, it was confirmed that 17-year-old para dressage rider Katie Reilly would travel to the Paralympic Games in Paris, having been selected among a group of five Paralympic athletes from five different sports with legendary four-time Paralympic champion Michael McKillop as a mentor.
The British-based Ticknevin, Co Kildare, native was selected to aid her development as part of Paralympics Ireland’s Futures Program, which is designed to foster the development of athletes with strong potential to represent Team Ireland at the 2028 Paralympic Games in Los Angeles, having represented Ireland at the 2023 European Championships in Germany with Impulz Z.
Freestyle chance
With her baby daughter Millie watching from the Kiss and Cry area in her husband Jonathan’s arms, Sarah Slattery opened her Paralympics in the Grade V Para Grand Prix Test A for ninth place and the reserve slot for the individual freestyle final, which would ultimately prove crucial. Early in the test, Savona took a small misstep, but the pair recovered well to score 68.410%.
Sarah, daughter of international show jumper Tom Slattery, was one of the three riders selected by Para Dressage High Performance Director Debora Pijpers for the team competition, along with Murphy and Kerr-Horan.
Slattery had based herself in The Netherlands with professional show jumper sister Sophie in the run up to the Games. The Neils Bax-trained rider improved her score to 68.895% in the Grade V Para Grand Prix Test A, as her contribution to the team score for which would see Ireland complete in the top 10. Slattery only began riding in para dressage four years ago, a cancer diagnosis in her left arm at the age of eight led her down this path.
Sarah’s first Paralympics were about to turn into a dream debut, when Brazilian Rodolpho Riskalla was ruled out at the horse inspection and she was into the Paralympic Freestyle Final. With just a couple of hours to prepare after the last-minute call-up, she and Savona delivered the test of their lives on the biggest para dressage sporting stage in the world, scoring 71.795% to move up to seventh place. It was only the second time ever the pair had ridden their Freestyle test.
Pure joy! Sarah Slattery punches the air after her test at the Paralympic Games in Paris with Savona \ Harry Murphy/Sportsfile
Reflecting on a memorable Paris Games at the Château de Versailles, the Galway Paralympian said it was “a magical fairytale ending to an already incredible week. To finish in seventh place was beyond my wildest dreams, it was just incredible. The next item on the agenda is to return home to Galway to finish the house that I and Jonathan started building! We’ll pick it back up in January and make a plan then for next year.”
Mixed emotions
It would prove to be a day of mixed emotions for Wicklow’s Kate Kerr-Horan in the opening Grade III Para Grand Prix A class at her second Paralympic Games. She just missed out on qualification for the Freestyle final placing ninth with last-minute call up Lykkebo’s Don Akino on 65.867%. Kate and the nine-year-old gelding would go on to contribute a score of 66.567% as part of the Irish trio in the team competition.
McKenna competed at her first Games with the 14-year-old gelding Davidoff 188, delivering a lovely fluid test to score 65.033% to finish just behind Kerr-Horan in 10th place in the Para Grand Prix A class.
Ireland’s Grade I para dressage rider Michael Murphy and Cleverboy agonisingly missed out on the Freestyle final at the Paris Games by less than half a mark on 70.417% in the Para Grand Prix A class. The Tokyo Paralympian delivered Ireland’s best score in the team competition, completing on a 73.083% total.
Michael would finish the Paralympics on a memorable note when he was bestowed with the honour, along with Tokyo swimming gold medallist Ellen Keane, to be one of Ireland’s official flag-bearers for the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paralympic Games in the Stade de France.
At the end of the year, Debora Pijpers announced her decision to step down from her role as High Performance director, after five years at the helm. London Paralympian multiple medallist Helen Kearney announced in December that she had decided to retire from the sport. A trailblazer, she was the first-ever para dressage rider to be named The Irish Field Dressage Rider of the Year in 2012.
Para dressage rider Michael Murphy was the Irish flagbearers with Ellen Keane for the closing ceremony of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games \ Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
Reilly on the rise
Seventeen-year-old Katie Reilly and Lymepark Riggeletto scored 65.500% for a podium finish in third place in the Grade III Grand Prix A class at the CPEDI3* show in Hartpury, Great Britain at the start of July.
Reilly welcomed the 13-year-old multiple Paralympic medal-winning Keystone Dawn Chorus to her string of horses in November. The mare was partnered by British Paralympian Natasha Baker to the Grade III individual and Freestyle bronze medals at the Paris Paralympic Games.
Rio eventing Olympian and now Irish para dressage international rider, Jonty Evans and the 18-year-old Irish Sport Horse gelding Cooley Rorkes Drift placed fourth in the Grade IV Grand Prix A class in June at the British CPEDI3* in Wellington Heckfield.
Former Team Ireland Grade V world championship rider Tamsin Addison and the 10-year-old KWPN gelding Jaguar completed on 65.570% for fourth place in the Grand Prix B class at the Hickstead showgrounds in May.
As one Paralympic cycle comes to an end so another one begins. The enticing prospect of the road to the Los Angeles 2028 Paralympic Games in the Golden State of California beckons for the cohort of talented Irish para dressage horse and rider combinations.