Caitriona Murphy

HORSE Sport Ireland chief executive Damian McDonald has said the roles of Ireland’s show jumping and eventing high performance managers will not be filled until early 2017, even though the contracts with current managers Robert Splaine and Nick Turner are due to end on September 30th.

Horse Sport Ireland, along with 20 other national sporting governing bodies, operates on a four-year cycle.

“HSI is funded by Sport Ireland with the relevant affiliates Showjumping Ireland, Eventing Ireland and Dressage Ireland also making contributions to their particular programmes,” said McDonald. “Over the next couple of months all of the programmes will be reviewed in full. Sport Ireland will be appointing an independent facilitator for each national governing body to assist with this process and we expect the HSI facilitator to be appointed shortly. The views of the affiliates will also be sought and they will be involved in the decision-making.

Only after the review is complete will plans be put in place for the next Olympic cycle and after this, issues like criteria, job specs, remuneration and interview panels and timelines for managers will be decided upon.

Horse Sport Ireland received €2.115m in high performance funding from Sport Ireland (formerly the Irish Sports Council) over four years for the Rio Olympics cycle, averaging just over €520,000 per year.

A spokesperson for Sport Ireland told The Irish Field: “While performances at the Olympic Games and other major championships will be taken into consideration when determining future funding for individual sports, it will not be exclusively based on performances. There are other factors which will be taken into consideration such as the strength of the system, talent pipeline et cetera.”

Damian McDonald said: “The review won’t just be about the Olympics. All aspects of the programme over the last four years will be looked at.

“The excellent results of our underage teams over the last four years will be something that will stand to us. I think we need to place a bit more emphasis on how we can bring this talent through at senior level.”

Commenting on the Irish Olympic performance, McDonald described Rio 2016 as “a mixed bag.”

“There were very strong performances from Jonty Evans and Judy Reynolds in particular. The eventing team’s performance in dressage was also a highlight, as it has been the focus of a lot of the high performance coaching activity over the last few years.

“However, we seem to be having more issues in the cross-country phase at recent championships, which is something we need to be conscious of. It is hard to find evidence to support the view that Ireland has an advantage over other countries in this phase. The cross-country is more technical now and we need to factor that into what we are doing. Our recent results in the show jumping phase of eventing have been very encouraging and we were strong in this phase at Rio as well.”

He continued: “Obviously, we were hoping to secure some sort of a medal in Rio but it didn’t happen. However, the fact is that equestrian sport has been part of the Olympic Games since 1912 and Ireland has only won one equestrian medal, which was won by Cian O’Connor in London.”

The HSI boss continued: “Unfortunately, equestrian sport was in the spotlight for the wrong reasons during some of the more recent Olympic Games but that was not the case this time. While we hoped for medals all of the athletes and their support staff were fantastic ambassadors for Ireland.

In sport you will have good results and bad results, but what we don’t want is to be in the news for the wrong reasons. There was a huge amount of very positive coverage for our sport and our athletes during the games with a huge interest in social media.”

He added that once the reviews are complete HSI would put its proposed plan together and seek support from Sport Ireland for its plans.

“After that we will be moving to fill the key high performance positions. I expect that it will be the new year before people are in place.”