Ocala, Fla.—March 23

As Team Ireland sat down for the press conference following their victory the Longines League Of Nations Ocala, moderator John Kyle joked that the country doesn’t have any more space in its trophy case.

“We can build another cabinet,” chef d’equipe Michael Blake quipped in reply.

It’s true that Ireland has been on a roll recently. After finishing second in the inaugural League of Nations leg in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, the team won the Nations Cup in Wellington (Florida) with a team that included three of the same riders who competed tonight, albeit on different horses. 

In tonight’s opening round, Darragh Kenny, Shane Sweetnam and Daniel Coyle, performed so well—each with a clear round—that they opted not to jump Cian O’Connor’s horse Maurice in the first round, despite the fact that a fast fourth ride could’ve put them in the pole position for the second round.

“I’d rather jump 16 less obstacles and go second last than to go in with a tired horse,” Blake said. “I think it worked out well.”

In the new League of Nations format, all four riders from the 10 participating countries jump in the first round, and each team gets a drop score. The top eight then move on to the second round—ties are determined by time—with only three riders, whose scores will all count toward the final tally. Though the Irish squad had plenty of time to make its decision, Blake stuck with their original plan of having Sweetnam sit out the second round because he had the greenest horse of the bunch.

Ireland put itself in a good position when Kenny (Amsterdam 27) had just one down in the second round, and Coyle (Legacy) turned in another clear. When Kent Farrington had two down with Landon, dropping the United States from first to second, it gave O’Connor some breathing room. While a rail could potentially lead to a jump-off, a clear round with a time fault would keep the Irish ahead. 

“You can only deliver last to go if the team have done their job,” O’Connor said. “So, my job is easy, right, with these three guys—amazing clear rounds. They had set the whole thing up for me, really. Daniel said on the way down, ‘Just get it done. Do a clear round.’ Michael said to me, ‘You can afford a time fault.’

“I wasn’t really riding for a time fault from the beginning of the course because if we have a fence late, we miss off on a jump-off,” he continued. “But when he jumped out of the [triple] combination, I just decided to take a breath and had an extra stride than most people to the second to last—10 strides rather than 9—and I just gave the horse a moment, and I think that’s where he picked up a fraction of time, and I was happy with the job.”

The winning Irish squad wasn’t the one Blake expected to have in Ocala this week. Bertram Allen initially was slated to compete, but when he had a bad fall last week, Blake called up Sweetnam, who is based in Wellington during the winter, to step in. Though Sweetnam’s 10-year-old Belgian Warmblood Otis Blue is less experienced than his teammates—he just jumped his first five-star earlier this month—he felt good about the gelding’s ability to perform.

“The horse is very inexperienced, but really got good mileage recently in Wellington, and he was clear in the five-star two weeks ago under the lights, obviously, so he’d shown he had the ability,” Sweetnam said. “And Michael was very, very persuasive about coming.”

“He delivered, obviously, to play a big factor in it,” Sweetnam added, “and then to be part of a great winning team, it’s pretty special.”

Podium Finish For U.S.

Things looked bright for the U.S. heading into the second round. Three riders, Laura Kraut (Baloutinue), Kent Farrington (Landon) and McLain Ward (Callas), put in clear efforts in the first round, and had the fastest combined time to earn the best spot going into round two over Ireland and the Netherlands, who were also on zero faults. 

While chef d’equipe Robert Ridland did discuss the possibility of using Aaron Vale and Carissimo 25, who had 4 faults in the first round, they ultimately chose to go with the three clears. 

“We considered doing other alternatives, because we could’ve sat one of the other riders in, in case of a jump-off, because there was a likelihood of a jump-off after the first round with three teams clean,” Ridland said. “But if you do that and you don’t make the jump-off, it comes back to you as a bad decision, so we pretty much stuck with what you would say would be the conventional format.”

Kraut, who served as the team’s pathfinder aboard her Tokyo Olympic partner Baloutinue, turned in a second clear performance to keep the team on top after the first rotation.

“I much prefer it to being the clean-up rider, like I had to do at the Pan American Games [(Chile) where the U.S. earned gold],” Kraut said.

“I have so much confidence in my horse, and I feel like we’ve got a good partnership now,” she added. “You know, versus the year of Tokyo [for the 2021 Olympics] where I didn’t really know what to do with him. Now I have a good idea, so hopefully he’s good for information for the rest of our team.”

The team couldn’t keep up the momentum when Farrington and Landon had a foot in the water and another fence down. Ward, who was the final rider in the class, had a rail as well to put the team on a final score of 12, dropping them behind Switzerland, whose three clear rounds moved them up to second on a score of 8. 

“We aim for the podium. This was the top 10 teams in the world, so being on the podium when it’s the top 10—there’s nothing wrong with that,” Ridland said. “Obviously, we would’ve rather been in the spot that [Ireland] had, but we’ll deal with that later. We’re giving them a little bit of a head start and a false sense of security.”

While clear rounds were tough to come by in Thursday’s grand prix, the first rotation of the League of Nations saw only Sweden fault. In the end, 16 of 40 riders jumped clear in tonight’s opener. In the second round, eight of 24 found a clear way around. 

“[Course designer Alan Wade] made a very good course today,” Kraut said. “We thought it was very straightforward. There weren’t many options or tricks, and the time was really lenient. I think we’re also used to really pushing against the clock that when everyone  realized you could tone it down a bit, I think that produced probably more clears than he was hoping for, but the second round got even.”

See complete results here.

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