IT has been one leap of faith after another for Robbie Kearns in 2025, whose 10th place at Luhmühlen earned him and Chance Encounter a place on the Irish silver medal-winning team at the European eventing championships; followed by a move to Surrey to study Veterinary Medicine and to set up a new yard with partner Isabel English.

“The European team silver was definitely my career highlight. It was, honestly, like a culmination of years of work, almost a relief, you know? At the start of the week, I thought we could do it. I didn’t know if it was going to be silver, but I thought we could get a medal. To stand on the podium with Dag [Albert], Ian [Cassells], Padraig [McCarthy] and Aoife [Clark]... it was the stuff that dreams are made of.”

How many riders in the world get to experience such podium appearances? One of the most endearing medal presentation scenes at Blenheim Palace was his horse Chance Encounter nudging Robbie for attention.

Bred by Robin Johnston (see Breeders’ 10, page 85), the traditionally-bred grey’s own story is the start of the next Horse of a Lifetime series, beginning next week.

Meanwhile, his rider’s story begins in Co Limerick where he was born. “I wouldn’t say I grew up around horses. I think the story goes that my brother Conor and sister Jenny were at Crecora Riding School and, as a two-year-old, I used to scream and scream until they would place me on Snowball, one of the ponies.

“We lived in Crecora and up the road from us was a really kind man Jim McNamara, a dairy farmer. He had this beautiful little show pony, Hayley, and we did the lead rein at Limerick Show when I was six. I started the Pony Club when I was maybe seven.”

“Mum and Dad bought me a pony for Christmas: Magpie, a coloured pony. He was sweet for all of three months and then he took clean advantage, he was so naughty. He used to stop all the time. Mum would get up with me before school every morning and we’d trot him up and down the road, Mum on her bike. Just walk-trot, walk-trot transitions, trying to put discipline on him. It helped loads and when we went back to Pony Club the next year, when I was eight, he was so much better.”

Robbie Kearns and his young rider mount Green Master \ Radka Preislerova

Several Co Limerick characters crop up during our conversation - Ann O’Grady (“A really nice lady, some horsewoman”), Chris Ryan (“Should be cloned!”) and the ever-present Joan Bateman. “I was really good friends with Joan’s son Paul and we spent our summers together, I spent loads of time at Joan’s house.

“When I was eight, all my cohort were doing the D test at Pony Club camp, which always clashed with the tennis camp that my brother did. And I said to Joan, ‘I really need to do the D and D+ tests together this year, because next year I’m going to be at tennis. If I miss the test this year, then I’ll be behind everyone’. I was young at the time, I did the tests but the next year I was back at Pony Club camp again!”

Vivid memories

For her part, Joan has vivid memories of the future five-star event rider. “Robbie was a joy to have in the Limerick Pony Club, as were his parents Trish and Gerry - always very supportive and willing to help out.

“While Robbie was fun-loving and a great team player, he seemed to have a keen interest in how his pony or horse was bred and in pedigrees, which was amazing for a Pony Club member at such a young age.

“His ability to work with his pony, his patience, calmness and awareness of different ponies’ personality types allowed him to bring the best out in them. I think he is a very natural and talented rider, with exceptional horsemanship skills.”

Limerick Pony Club and TIHA dynamo Joan Bateman pictured with Irish team silver medallist event rider Robbie Kearns and HSI’s Sonja Egan at the TIHA presentation at Dublin in August \ Jennifer Haverty

Uilleann pipe serenade

Eventing won out over showing for young Kearns. “I did loads of showing as a kid, I think it polishes a young rider and you learn about turnout, even learning how to do quartermarks. I did the Dublin working hunter classes and then it was more that I’d prefer a little bit more adrenaline.”

Eventing provided the adrenaline rush for the youngster, starting with a Transition Year apprenticeship spent with Irish international event rider Jane O’Flynn, who had competed at European and World Equestrian Games level.

“I was supposed to go on an exchange to France, but I ended up staying in Jane’s the whole time because I was hellbent on trying to go to the Europeans, or at least try my hardest to get there, as a junior. Jane lent me her horse that year and we ended up buying the mare - Garrybritt Bonny - from her.”

Bred by the late Betty Parker, the Ramiro B mare and Robbie didn’t make the European team that summer, although it was still a remarkable summer.

“I hadn’t evented before or maybe done a couple of EI100s the season before, and I ended up going from an EI100 in March to doing the three-star short in July at Camphire, which, without Jane, would have been impossible. Like Ann and Joan, she is a mighty woman too, one of the most inspirational horsewomen I’ve ever met.

“It was an amazing year in Jane’s. One of my distinct memories was her late husband Liam, who was a member of the famous Planxty band, as he used to play his uilleann pipes in his music hut while we would be riding in the school. It was just like a dream, the music playing across the fields.”

Bloodlines

Following on from his interest from a young age in how a horse is bred, does he have any preference, finds that traits run in bloodlines or is it just that Irish thing that we love to know a horse’s pedigree?

“Probably a mix of all. I do really enjoy the breeding. I think it’s really interesting to watch the traits come through and they definitely do. I really love Master Imp in the mare’s breeding. I had a really, really nice Master Imp when I was a young rider, Green Master (Breeder: Brigid Fenlon). He was out of a Laughton’s Flight dam and he was beautiful. He was actually quite similar to Harry [Chance Encounter], he had the same sort of brain, same traits, same cleverness and so quickfooted. The good ones try for you.

“I think the biggest problem - and I’ve spoken with Joan [Bateman] about this - and the way the Traditional Irish Horse lost its way a little bit, was breeding from mares that weren’t quality enough to produce the top, top type of horse. And I think that’s why people don’t give them enough credit any more.”

Family outlier

Back to his studies and post-Leaving Cert, it was Business and Economics, not Veterinary, that topped his CAO application form first time around.

“From when I was a kid, I always cared a lot about animals. My parents are both doctors, so are my brother and sister. I suppose I was the outlier in the family, as I wanted to do Veterinary at some point.

“I remember when I finished school, I actually really wanted to ride straight away. And my parents said, ‘No, the best thing to do is go to college, get a degree’.

“I thought about Veterinary, knew it was a big commitment and I thought that if I didn’t give the riding more of a go at the start, I wouldn’t have enough of a foundation to be able to do both. So I think if I had done Veterinary the first time around, I’d probably never know what I know now; my knowledge on producing and riding at the upper levels.”

The interim degree has now turned out to be a pragmatic choice, given his and Isabel’s plan to set up an expanded yard in Surrey. Robbie met ‘Bella’ when he moved to Australian Olympian Kevin McNab’s yard. Although he was surrounded by Aussies, there was a familiar “traditional-bred” in the charismatic form of Feldale Mouse, the grey Connemara-TB cross that brought Isabel from Pony Club to competing at five-star events such as Badminton and Burghley.

“Bella worked for Michael Jung for three years too, so she was there when [La Biosthetique] Sam was winning all those five-stars.”

No more than the knowledge picked up during his Transition Year at Jane’s, he found his next stop was “amazing”.

“Kevin shaped me a lot as a rider, like how I ride now. He’s so good at teaching. Beforehand, I just kind of got on the horses, I might give them a jump but everything there is very structured. The ethos is all around creating safety within riding, teaching horses to think for themselves and to allow them enough time to develop and understand what they’re being asked. It’s been super, super helpful for producing horses.”

Don Quidam, the horse McNab won team silver on at the Tokyo Olympics, and Scuderia A Best Friend are two of the yard’s top horses recalled from his time there. “I was there at a really awesome time of Kevin’s career, he also won Le Lion on Cute Girl.

“It was inspirational. I would say young riders can become complacent, you think, ‘That’s it. I’m great’. But go to a big yard and you just say, ‘Right. I’ve got to stretch myself to keep up’. I had a super time in Kevin’s for two years and I also met Bella there, which was very important.”

Dag Albert, Robbie Kearns, Padraig McCarthy, Aoife Clark and Ian Cassells after winning team silver at the FEI Eventing European Championships at Blenheim Palace

Icon idols

And then a phone call out of the blue. “Richard [Ames] rang me and offered me the job as his head rider. And, I mean, obviously, it was a really tough choice at the time, because Bella was here and I had my own mare Very Dignified, who I had just done Le Lion on. I bought her from Deirdre Bowler, a really good friend of Jane’s and she’s been sold to Will Coleman since.”

Making the cross-channel move back to Belline Estate Equestrian in south Co Kilkenny was “super daunting at the start! For sure, because I was going from working for Kevin, being in a system and then I was suddenly the manager, head rider of this huge yard, beautiful, amazing facilities, 30 to 40 horses and a team of staff. So it was definitely a big change.

“I learned so much there and it’s amazing what you can achieve with someone as motivated as Richard behind you. He’s an amazing ambassador for the sport and the sport does really rely on that sort of ambassador.

"Richard and his wife Tanja have so much passion for the horses and eventing. Owners are the backbone of the community, because without them, it’s really impossible.

“It was an amazing time there and I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

Asked earlier about equestrian idols growing up in Limerick, Robbie had nominated National Hunt legend Tony McCoy. “Unbelievable jockey. And obviously he rode for J P McManus. Eventing-wise, when I was a kid, I always watched William Fox-Pitt. And he was judging the Dublin young event horse classes this year! We actually won the five-year-old final with Belline Kasparov (Quality Time TN. Breeder: Ian Norris), who I think is going to be a superstar.”

Another standout was Belline Thistle Bethelasttime (Grafenstolz). “A super little mare. Her breeder (Johnston Brodie) actually came out to Le Lion to watch her in the seven-year-olds, he’s a super-nice man. I think she was the last foal out of the mare, which is where her name came from and her breeder is Scottish, so the thistle part all tied in.”

The news that Millstreet was awarded next year’s FEI World under 25s eventing championships has a special significance to Robbie, who won the CCI2*-L at the North Cork fixture back in April.

“That was my first win there and that is great news, it’s a really good string to their bow. I mean Millstreet is an absolutely phenomenal venue, I love it and we did the Europeans there in 2017 with Garrybritt Bonny.”

That Le Lion d’Angers appearance in October with Belline Thistle Bethelasttime is the last one listed in his 2025 competition record before it was back to the books. “Richard always has lovely horses, they’re just a pleasure to produce and part of me was, ‘Maybe I should just keep riding?’”

His original ambition of studying Veterinary won out though. “Tim O’Hagan, J P King and Rosie Alcorn were super-inspiring to be fair, they helped me loads of times,” he said, acknowledging these vets who helped him along the way, “and then also British vet Jon Hercom helped me with my application.

“I’d be a vet now if I’d done it after my Leaving Cert!” And most likely, on-call on a Friday night when we catch up after a presentation he had in college earlier. “I’m in Surrey, it’s going good and I’m seven weeks in now. We’ve had a lot of anatomy lectures and I’m learning about the GI tract at the moment, so it’s really interesting.”

Any Christmas exams looming ahead? “Oh, they start in January! We’re actually going to Australia for 10 days before then to visit Bella’s family just outside Brisbane and then we’re going to be back just before Christmas.”

Join the journey

It will be difficult to top 2025’s five-star and European championship highlights, although another exciting year lies ahead for this hardworking young couple.

“We’re starting out on our own with a yard in Shamley Green, just outside Guildford. We’re in a small interim yard now and we have 13 horses at the moment, until we move there on January 1st. The plan is to have 20 to 25 horses. We’d love to have more owners who are as passionate and want to go on a fun journey with either of us. I have a couple of young horses, I’d love to have an upper level horse again and to build on the European medal.

“Bella is going to be amazing as she always is. Honestly, she’s making it possible for me to do the degree and to ride, because she’s been such a huge support. I am still very driven and ambitious with my riding, so I am planning to do both and, luckily, we have loads of support which is great.”

Back to that young Limerick Pony Club member who bypassed tennis camp. Does he still play?

“I can play the piano! Signature tune? Probably Ludovico Einaudi’s I Giorno. That probably sounds impressive, but it’s the easiest to play! I think the last time I played tennis though, was when me and Bella got very inspired by Wimbledon. We decided to buy rackets and then it turns out we’re terrible at tennis!”

Just as well the future European team medallist stuck to his Pony Club camp plans instead?

“For sure, for sure!”

Next week: Horse of a Lifetime - Chance Encounter.