Even now, hurling percolates Michael Blake’s world. Brought up in Tuamgraney in East Clare, it’s close to fifty decades since the high performance director of Ireland’s hugely successful show jumping team put away the hurley and concentrated on the saddle.
He remembers well his time at St Flannan’s when the Ennis college ended 18 years without a Harty Cup in 1976, and the golden period that followed as they lost two finals and came through again in 1979. Clare’s resurrection in the 1990s elicits relief and some regrets.
1996 and the loss to Limerick. The Offaly protest in ’98. Ach!
This background bubbles to the surface time and again, even when the conversation revolves exclusively around a day job that has seen Ireland enjoy an extraordinary run of success at some of show jumping’s most illustrious of events around the world.
In recent weeks alone, Irish teams have won two Nations Cups on different continents within five days having already won a prestigious Longines League of Nations Cup event on a third, in Abu Dhabi, only last February. All with completely different riders.
This week sees the team in Aachen to defend another prestigious title.
Ireland’s recent podium finish rate has ballooned to almost 80%. They had eleven Nations Cup podiums last year alone. Other countries would sit in and around the 40% mark. The one fly in this ointment is the inability to get over the line in the biggest of the big ones.
They lost the World Championships by six-hundredths of a second. What Blake refers to as an “eyelash”. A team of Shane Sweetnam, Daniel Coyle and Cian O’Connor couldn’t build on a perfect platform on the final day at last year’s Olympics in Paris when coming in seventh.
Here comes one of those hurling analogies.
“We need to put it in the net all the time,” said Blake. “I know that’s hard to do, but we should put it in the net nine times out of 10 because now we have that kind of ability. We almost have that kind of structure and depth. The constant winning should be soon normal.”
He knows better than anyone the tiny margins involved. Working with animals brings with it an added and obvious layer of the unexpected. A horse can step on a stone, or be sold by an owner, and everything can change.
Ireland named their squad two weeks earlier than others for the Games, in case of any objections lodged over team selections. How problematic is that? Well, says Blake, Limerick wouldn’t name their team seven weeks before an All-Ireland, would they?
“We’re bitterly disappointed that we let our nation down. We wanted to do our best and we’ve bounced back before and after. We’ve bounced back now. We’re the only country in the world that have two five-star wins up this year and so we can’t be too bad.”
This ability to win often and with multiple riders isn’t a fluke. Blake reckons Ireland can call on a pool of riders that may be as large as 30 while powerhouses such as Sweden and Switzerland are struggling having stuck with the same, small gene pool.
“I’ve created a monster,” he laughed when asked about the selection headaches involved.
It’s a base he started to build at underage levels back in 2012. Young riders were backed and encouraged to pack their knapsacks and go off and build resilience and careers. They went from being big fish in a small pond here to minnows abroad.
A young rider’s academy was set up at home in support. They were educated on everything from conduct, to how to get an owner, media training, veterinary, accounting and how to get a lorry licence. All skills essential to this most unique of sporting careers.
“Being able to ride the horse is very important, but it’s 50% at most.” The Nations Cup title claimed in La Baule earlier this month was won with two young riders, Seamus Hughes Kennedy and Tom Wachman, riding two young horses. All performed admirably. Blake likens it to minor players mixing it with the big boys.
Hughes Kennedy is a 23-year old who, he said, has come from nowhere to be “the new Ronaldo in this world”. The really exciting part in all this is how much better again this new generation will be when the time comes to tackle the next Games in LA in 2028.
There is plenty to be done, and won, before then. Blake speaks of his love for Aachen and Rome and La Baule and a Dublin event that he describes as the Mecca. But that elusive Olympic medal exercises his mind constantly.
“There’s only them [Olympic] circles,” he admitted. “That’s what I’m after.”
