TWENTY years after his Kentucky silver medal win, John Watson bowed out of eventing.

“My last three-day event, as I remember, was in 1998, on a little home-bred mare called Floating. She came about because Paul Darragh came to supper over Clonmel Show and he was extolling the virtues of a five-year-old stallion he was mad about, named Cruising.”

After “one bottle of wine too many”, the decision was made to cover Julia’s hunter Widgeon, “A lovely mare by Pride of Shaunlara”, with Cruising and Floating was the result. Another of Widgeon’s offspring was Clear Conscience, the dam of Bushman. “Clear Conscience was by Horos, who stood at Suma Stud and he was out of the ‘supermare’ Sound of Success, who also bred Sonus, Accordion and Hawaian Sound,” explained John in pedigree buff mode.

As a six-year-old, Floating finished second in the Blarney one-star to Trish Ryan on the future Sydney Olympics horse, Don’t Step Back. The only one to finish on her dressage score, Floating repeated this feat at Blarney again, this time in the two-star with Rozzie Watson.

“Floating became the junior and young rider team ride of my second daughter, Rozzie. My eldest, Suzannah, was a talented dressage rider and has the distinction of being the only one of the siblings, so far, to produce an ‘Olympic horse’. We bought it for her off Shane Breen and the mare went on to the Paralympics at Athens.

“Thinking of Shane, the late Tommy Wade told me of two riders whom he said did not have a good enough “eye” to be top show jumpers. One was Shane and the other was Cian O’Connor! That dramatically proves a point often made by Sam, that if you work hard and smart, you can create your own talent.

“You sure are much more likely to succeed through application, than if you think or are told you have talent and then do not bother to work at it! I salute Shane’s talent (and Carmel Ryan’s breeding) winning that great Irish Masters contest last week on TV.

“A tremendous coup for the sport and ‘Up Tipp’ for Alan Wade, who is absolutely world class as a course builder. It is so sad this ‘damned bug’ prevented a live crowd,” he continued, remarking on Covid-19’s blight too on sport.

“It is sad to me because our top riders are now mostly based abroad, riding foreign-bred and often foreign-bought horses, that, save for Dublin, it is rare to see them except on TV. That Aga Khan ‘Dream Team’ could regularly be seen around county shows such as Clonmel, Ballivor, Thomastown etc,” he added about how the iconic status of Paul Darragh, James Kernan, Eddie Macken and Con Power’s was built in no small part by their visibility to the public.

A sailor’s knots

John’s father was chairman and later president of their local Clonmel Show. “He coined the job spec for the next head of Horse Sport Ireland as he was fond of saying that the one essential for any equestrian chairman in Ireland is to ‘Sit on the fence with an ear to the ground.’ Explains why having a ‘bad back’ runs in the family?!”

Another family trait, according to John, is “the girls in my tribe had a habit of having the star horses. Even in our horse breeding, the credit is all Julia’s. The only reason I get any credit is that fees and registrations were paid by me as part of the farm!

“Mum had Watersprite and my sister, Sandra Craik-White, had a grey pony named Rakush after the horse of the legendary Persian warrior, Rustem. While I commuted to boarding school, she had spent the Tehran years there full time,” he explained about the siblings youth spent in Iran where their diplomat father had been posted.

“Mary McCarthy found his name a touch tricky and insisted Rakush be known as Ragusa. So ‘Goosey’ he became! For a while he was quite successful under a young lad mentored by Mary, who became the now highly successful Carrick-on-Suir trainer, Pat Flynn.”

Racing figures large too in his story. “Along with eventing, I had great experience and fun from starting off young National Hunt horses. Arthur Moore sent me some lovely horses which went on to notable success.

“As long as I remember anything, I hope I will continue to recall the thrill and feel of starting Kairon Davis over mini hurdles and the excitement of him winning the Queen Mother Chase at Cheltenham. Julia was the first to sit on Wylde Hyde who won two Thyestes Chases.

“George Ponsonby taught me that a horse should know how to jump ‘like a sailor learnt his knots: awake, asleep; sober or drunk’. Sam has taken that further in that he sees it as his job to ensure a horse has understood what to do and then it’s the horse’s job to do it. Most of them, especially the Puissances, relish that responsibility.”

Mentioning son Sam and his particular bond with Puissance stock, combined with the chaotic scenes at Dover port this week after France banned UK freight, recalls lighter travel tales.

“Old friendships and great learning were renewed when Sam was able to base himself at Talland for one of his summer spells in England.” This happened some 30 years after John and his new arrival Cambridge Blue, transported around England by car and single trailer, were based there.

“As Sam had not at that stage got his HGV licence, I used to commute via Bristol airport, train and bus, to drive him and the three horses he had with him in a slightly dodgy truck, to the events in England.

“Me and horse trucks have always had a mixed relationship. It reached its nadir on the celebrated trip to Pau when Sam got swept off by a tree on the cross-country course and by Sparkles (Hannah) over supper! We had then set off early on the long haul home, via Calais, only to discover as we drove off at Dover, that the wheel nuts had shaken loose and a back wheel fallen off, wrecking the hubs.”

Circling the wagons

The decision to downsize from the 18th-century Ballingarrane House, built by Solomon Watson, was taken in 2000. “The millenium heralded the major move from Clonmel back to Carlow. Our Georgian house needed serious repair. Livestock farming at the urban-rural divide of an expanding town, challenged restful sleep. The constant farming squeeze (ever-rising costs and bureaucracy against both output limits and static farm prices), called for a family conference. We reached a decision I haven’t regretted,” John said, recalling the family ‘hitching up their wagons’ to leave Clonmel.

“It was hardest on Julia who had successfully transplanted herself to Tipperary in 1977 and now faced moving again.”

Ironically, the wagon trail found the family back in Carlow, where John’s namesake ancestor and famous master of foxhounds lived. “Anywhere local we fancied was soon out of reach with competition from at least two actively expanding Tipperary family empires. Then our place in Carlow found me. A 300-year migration came back to its roots.

“After 20 years to consolidate, last year it became time to pass the Ballybolger reins to Sam for his turn. More good fortune there, because he, as you know, is a man for the age of Information Technology. Despite the ground-breaking strides of EquiRatings and his concepts for the future of eventing, the grass is not growing under his feet. He is already steering his aptitude for equestrian data into other areas with exciting potential,” he predicted.

“I hung up my riding boots in 2011 when, inexplicably to me, I experienced a case of the ‘jelly knees’. I saw it as a sign that after some 45 years of what has been a most enjoyable active ‘retirement’, it is probably time to knuckle down and end the gap year which I had started after, instead of before, college.”

Another career opportunity, came along though. “Along my way I’ve adopted a couple of sidelines where I came across a product, where through using it myself, I thought it well good enough at the time to recommend. Pour-on rubber flooring was one and Claydon Horse Walkers another.

“This autumn, while already a minor shareholder in Silver Spear Gin, the original company offered me the brand as a going concern at a bargain price. Despite it being perhaps more of a concern than going, I have a couple of friends who also thought it much too delicious a gin to leave it disappear.

“Plus with the place handed over to Sam, I needed something to keep me out of his way! The attraction of gin is that the bottles don’t eat or need mucking out or need a vet in the middle of the night. It even has to live away in a secure bonded warehouse.

“The blessing for me of the disaster of the hospitality sector shutdown is that I have a bit of time to gather my obviously seriously scattered wits,” he said, in his usual self-deprecating way.

“So with Tokyo looking likely as running behind closed doors and racing as always having its needs to congratulate or commiserate, the equestrian world now knows who to contact when the moment calls for something a bit extra,” he added about the brand which, with its silver spear logo, circles back to the Kawnpore Tent Club family memento.

Flirting with dishonesty

Marketing goes hand in hand with business, however you find he has frank views on the subject and livestock breeding.

“I have probably won and lost friends over my passion for the traditionally-bred Irish horse and the views I hold with deeply-reasoned conviction,” he said candidly.

“From farming, I learnt that as human beings, in our natural pursuit of power and wealth, we put so little value on true sustainability. It is a wrong against nature when ‘to farm’ means ‘to exploit.’ Nature, generous as she may be, is a hard and unforgiving spouse of careless or carefree ‘husbandry’.

“We ignore, at our peril, the warnings that her patience is wearing thin. There are simply too many humans for our planet for humanity to live as we do, as a plague upon it. Something is wrong with the model, when for those of us who can remember Live Aid, it made many of us feel good to ‘rescue’ four million people from starvation. What did that achieve?” he asked, regretfully.

“A generation later, the same problem reappears there, only this time it’s 12 million starving and migrating people [from the East African region].

“Tragically, the whole notion of sustainability has been ‘hijacked’ by forces who see only an opportunity for commercial and political gain. They are aided and abetted by marketeers whose role seems to be to create demand to benefit their paymasters. Yes, marketing is a crucial skill where it informs and educates. Yet, this bright coin has a darker side when it drives a sense of a false need and obscures inconvenient side-effects.”

Clever wording is classed by him as “inherent flirting with dishonesty, which is nowadays such a feature of marketing, for example, ‘Irish smoked salmon’ versus ‘Smoked Irish salmon’.

“As a breeder, I have always considered that each generation should improve on its parents. While theoretically the genes are shared 50/50 I do think nurture, plus nature, makes the dam’s role ultra-important. The TIHA [Traditional Irish Horse Association] Council has a wonderful pilot scheme to rescue and restore our special Irish mare lines already running. As with so many great ideas, it is presently long-sighted and short-funded.”

Although he acknowledges that cloning, “used with great care, can be invaluable,” he regards the option as “treading water”.

“While I understand the theories, I personally prefer to look beyond cloning. Unless there is other good reason (and sometimes there genuinely may be and above just commercial greed), I see it both as standing still and artificially reducing the breadth of the gene pool, even if it concentrates it.

“Cynically, I could say here, for the craic and not devoid of truth, that it is too often more for the financial advantage of the human practitioners and breeders than for the advancement of the stock being bred?”

He is equally outspoken on his beliefs that the traditionally-bred Irish horse has been poorly served “for more than a generation by those who were its ‘official custodians” and that the ‘Irishness’ element in sport horses bred here is in danger of being lost.

“I admire and congratulate those ‘pedigree’ breeders who had the foresight and desire to see the trend towards what is modern show-jumping. They saw commercial potential to create a new, hybrid, breed or type of horse for that game. There is nothing wrong in openly and honestly experimenting with and exploring cross-breeding. Indeed, that is how new breeds for new purposes emerge.

“Where we are heading for trouble is because we have seen the process before. The ‘old’ Irish half-bred faced a crisis, when the Irish Draught faded in numbers and popularity, as the half-bred market customer began to prefer a three-quarter-bred.

“If commercial, profit-seeking breeders went for the ‘traditional’ half-bred mares to produce the three-quarter-bred foals for the marketplace, who was going to sustain the Draught breed from which to produce the future replacement half-bred foundation mares? The well damned near ran dry!

“Now, more than ever, Irish Sport Horse breeders aiming to produce Pan-European showjumpers need to ensure that there is still a pool of mares of sufficient quality and with the unique ‘Irishness’ required to differentiate the Irish European jumper from say, the Dutch, Belgian, French or German version.

“Behind this, there is a need not just for data. It is fundamentally critical how that data is analysed to ensure truthful interpretation.

“If a puppy pees in the house and we rub its nose in it to display our displeasure and throw it outside, ‘to teach it a lesson’, should we be surprised if the lesson it learns is to pee, sniff it and then dash outside?!”

Knowledge gap

One silver lining of this bizarre year is the time and opportunity to write and read the stories of the range of characters we have in this country. The ‘darker side of the coin’ to borrow wordsmith Watson’s phrase, is how little of their stories, knowledge and achievements are available on the game-changing internet.

Back when John Watson won his world championship silver medal in 1978, the first Walkmans were added to Christmas present wishlists and brick-size mobile phones were new on the market too. Which shows how rapidly technology has changed and how double-edged sword dependent we’ve become on the internet.

There are some books, often out-of-print and gloriously of their time, written about eventing’s long format era. However, the fact that there’s still so little to be gleaned online about an Irish silver medallist career meant, that despite his good-natured protestations and concern for a “recently-over inflicted readership”, his story deserved telling in detail. As did Susan and Clare Oakes, then Mary Wilson and Clare Ryan and each of this year’s West of the Shannon storytellers with similarly untold gems, adventures and often Plan B careers.

Back to an upcoming Christmas at Ballybolger, where, according to John, “the glue which has and continues to hold it all together with unceasing patience and fore-bearance as wife, mother and hands-on Granny is the wonderful Julia, who tells us always to be...kind.

“Whatever lies ahead is what my mother used to say to me and I now find myself saying to my grandchildren – ‘We will have to wait and see and just be ready’.”