A CAREER with horses wasn’t carved in stone for a young Joan White.

“I was never going full-time into horses! I didn’t know what to do after school so I went back to do my Leaving Cert to have a cut at veterinary and studied very hard,” she explained.

“Then shows, like the Spring Show, started kicking in. I missed veterinary by two points but got biochemistry. I knew nothing about biochemistry, so said I’d take a year out. That’s when Max Hauri encouraged me to go work for him.”

Growing up, she and her siblings – James, Marie, Liam and Sheila – have the fondest memories of travelling to shows. Pony Club and hunt meets with their father Jim.

“He’d be telling us the names of trees or asking ‘what’s that bird called in Irish?’ said Sheila. Knowing which churches offered 6am Sunday Mass was essential and there was often an “Up Clare!” battle cry hollered out the lorry window by the youngsters, mindful of their Tulla roots, passing through Limerick city.

There was also the incident when the lorry windscreen shattered passing through Mallow. “Anyone else would have turned around but he kept going all the way to the show in Cork. I don’t think turning back was a possibility. We’re a little bit that way ourselves, we always keep trying,” Joan said.

“I was lucky in that the ponies were handed down to me so by the time I got them, they knew their job! I had great times with Hill Star, second in the Dublin championship and then second in the Dublin Indoor International with Meranti, my other 14.2, were the best memories.

“He was bought from Paddy McCormack who had a timber factory. Meranti was a type of wood, so he named the pony after that. There’s stories to every pony!

“Liam, Sheila and I got to the RDS on the games team too. We didn’t do GAA but that was our GAA with the camaraderie.”

Dublin Indoor International was another highlight. “I remember doing Pony Club games there too, they put the five of us up in a caravan for the week and that was great fun.”

Bringing show jumping to the capital was ahead of its time. “Sure that’s what they’re doing with the Global Champions Tour – show jumping in big cities. We were years ahead, only we didn’t just manage to keep it up.”

Max and Iris

Before Joan packed her bags for Switzerland, there was an important milestone on Banner County home ground; the European junior championships. She already had some experience on horses owned by the Burke family in Ballycar once Vincent was out of juniors.

“And then Jimmy Flynn gave me the ride on Heather Honey.”

A proud Ennis man, Flynn was renowned for making his ‘Heather’ horses available. “He gave a lot of young riders chances by giving them horses,” Joan said gratefully. “The Europeans were in Ennis that year so it was local. I jumped her in the Spring Show and a couple of Grand Prix classes and got selected on the team.

“She won the first day by me just steering her! Heather Honey was naturally a fast mare and then in the Nations Cup, she had a fence down which was very unlike her but she was one of the first mares to have embryos taken off her. She actually started dropping milk after that competition as her Clover Hill ET foal was due around the same time.”

Shortly after those championships, Joan went to Hauri’s yard. “Sure he was in our yard several times a year buying horses, so he knew all of us. I loved it there and learned a lot from Max. He taught me about producing young horses and was able to do it without taking away your natural feel for a horse. Everything I do to this day, a lot of it goes back to then.

“We worked very hard, there’s no doubt about that but I like to be busy. The shows, where you could only jump four horses, were fantastic,” she said recalling ran-like-Swiss-clockwork competitions.

“I remember we jumped on snow at one show. For me, coming from Ireland where you might have snow an odd winter and here you were, studding up horses and greasing their feet, it was an experience!”

After 13 months in Hauri’s Swiss finishing school, Joan returned home. “I was tempted to go to America but came home for Christmas and Iris Kellett offered me a job with her. I was stable jockey there in the final year before she sold the centre.

“She put so many great riders on the map. Iris had obviously retired from competing then but you have to admire how she made a living out of training. Just how the whole establishment ran is something that stands out.”

Business acumen is a trait she regards as essential nowadays. “To be a good rider brought you a long way when I was starting off.

"Now, the training is so good, that to really get on, you have to be a very good business person first and foremost. There’s so many good riders now that just being ‘good’ doesn’t bring you very far anymore,” she said, thoughtfully.

“John Hall was a fantastic help with my flatwork, he polished what Max had taught me. Of all the yards I’ve worked in, there was great camaraderie between the students and staff, it was very enjoyable.”

Joan Greene with Abbey Colleen at Millstreet International Horse Show in 2013 \ Denisa-equinephotography.com

Pros and cons

Did she ever think of going west? “I had an American passport. All I had to do was walk on a plane and go out. People who’d bought horses from Max Hauri offered me a job but I didn’t take them up on the offer.

“Now, so many years later, it seems stupid because you could make such a great career in America, such a good way of life, but it was quiet in America then compared to Europe. Florida, as we know it now, was only starting up.”

The other and best reason behind her decision to stay was family ties. “We’re such a close family that you were always happy to come back home. There’s pros and cons to it all,” she said pragmatically.

Her American passport is owed to her mother Maureen (née Ahearne) who met Jim White on a visit home from Kings Park in Long Island. Among their wedding guests was a fellow veterinary surgeon, the late Michael Osborne.

“Mum is a cousin of Con Collins, the racehorse trainer, and Con’s sister Ber is one of her best friends. Con’s brother Michael was very friendly with Michael Osborne and so the two Michaels happened to be in America at the time,” Joan said, explaining the Irish guests welcome presence.

“It was a huge change for Mum to come back to Ireland and be a vet’s wife. Everybody knows my father from the shows but my mother really looked after us all and kept us all together,” said Joan fondly.

“You never heard a word of complaint from her and she was so hard-working behind the scenes. She loved hunting and is the only one of us to have competed at a point-to-point in the hunt race!” Sheila added.

Have they visited Long Island? “Mum brought us all on a trip before we were 12 because we got out half-price on the plane! And then in later years, I went over a few times to meet up with family there. It was a break away from the farm, away from horses,” said Joan, who was competing her own string by then.

Diplomacy rules when asked about standout horses from a lengthy list on the Showjumping Ireland (SJI) database. “I don’t think you could name one. I jumped a couple of top horses, like Shannon Dale. I jumped her in the World Cup qualifier in Millstreet. She was going into her first year as a Grand Prix horse and for a green mare to do that against the German and European riders, just shows what a good mare she was.

“She was a good servant for the Army as well,” Joan noted about Michael Walsh’s Laughton’s Flight mare.

“We produced some gorgeous young horses for Michael from Shannondale Stud. Kilkishen (Cavalier Royale) was another sold to the Army and went on to top level. Michael kept breeding lovely young horses, they were a pleasure to ride.”

Millstreet to Madagascar

“Then Biscaya [D’Eversem] brought me to Nations Cup level,” she continued. With Tim O’Shea’s Belgian-bred mare, the pair, alongside Edward Little, Tholm Keane and Alexander Butler, notched up a double clear for the winning Irish Nations cup team, at Ypäjä in 2010.

“We did that Nations Cup show in Finland and then went on to Drammen in the same trip where we were third in the Grand Prix.”

One place ahead was Blue Loyd with Norwegian rider Nina Braaten. “That was the year before Cian [O’Connor] got him, so that shows the calibre of the horse in that class. It was some feeling to jump a 1.60m track like that.”

Joan Greene on Biscaya D'Eversem winning at Cavan International in 2012

More highlights include jumping at an invitational show in Qatar in 2003 and a dream trip to Madagascar.

“Myself, Marion Hughes and Danielle Quinlivan got invited to compete in a ladies’ team competition there when they were trying to promote show jumping. We flew via Paris and spent a week there jumping borrowed horses around a 90cms course. It was nice to travel and see these places, thanks to show jumping.

“They’re all highlights,” she added about her years in a green jacket. Not that either sister has hung up theirs. “You keep dreaming” said Sheila, who thinks her current string of young horses is better than ever, including Franklin Surprise who won his first 1.30m class at Clare Equestrian Centre last Sunday. “I predict if good health is with him you’ll be hearing a lot more of ‘Frankie’ in the future.”

Fairytale

Both sisters and Joan’s husband, Pat Greene, accompanied Marie and Chippison to Aachen in 2006 when they were the best-placed of the Irish at the World Equestrian Games. Both describe the Chippison story – the embryo transfer gift from Willie Boland – as a fairytale.

“Marie could have sold him for a lot of money,” Sheila said. “We were so proud of them at Aachen.”

“I was lucky I did a few shows with Marie that summer when they were third in the Madrid and Dublin Grands Prix,” Joan added.

“I was amazed at the size of the fences, even having seen the size of the Madrid and Dublin fences. They were even bigger at the championships.

“We were allowed in to walk the course and Pat stood in between an oxer. He couldn’t touch the front and back pole, that will tell you how wide they were.”

Pat himself rode and trained point-to-point winners and competed in the Dublin amateur classes. “He was very friendly with the Burkes in Ballycar and basically grew up there so I knew him for years!”

The couple have facilities for 20 horses at their Newmarket-on-Fergus base, however the yard took a backseat after Joan’s accident last October.

“It was a just a simple fall, a young horse fell on top of me and I splintered the top half of my femur. They came in on a Sunday and operated on me,” explained Joan.

Support network

She sings the praises of University Hospital Limerick staff, already under pressure with the pandemic. “They were brilliant, all my care was fantastic. It was just very hard to find out what the future was going to hold. There was no road map out of it,” Joan remarked, adding that she would like to see a support system, akin to horse racing, applied to the sport horse world.

“It’s something I’ve been thinking about. You see in racing when a jockey has a bad accident, they have the support of a doctor, they’re being treated and getting rehab as athletes and have someone to talk to for moral support. I’d love if something like that could be set up within the SJI.

“I was four months on crutches and then with Covid, you couldn’t go anywhere. The days were long but the people who called to me were people who’d gone through serious accidents themselves. It was such a help to have them call and talk and you know there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

“I’m great now. I’m very lucky in they did a seriously good job on the surgery and that Pat has a full-time job in Shannon, because I was out for months. You’re self-employed, you’re not entitled to anything and naturally any liveries I had went away, so we were just very lucky he had a full-time job.”

She’s back competing now. “At the beginning of 2021, I couldn’t commit to what way my year was going to go and how strong my leg would be but now it feels great.

“I’ve a few young horses of my own and it’s given me more time to help my daughter Jill (13),” she added about the one silver lining to her accident. “We were in Cavan last weekend as she’s trying to make her own ponies and jumping the younger ones at the moment.”

Joan is also busy helping organise assessments and coaching sessions in the Limerick-Clare region, while Marie and Sheila are Level 2 coaches.

“We still have the most brilliant riders coming through and now they’re so lucky with the SJI coaching system and the five-bar programme brought in by Ian Fearon and Gisela Holstein. It’s so encouraging when you look at the results of ponies and horses with riders that have learned from it. I wish I was 20 again to learn from it!” Sheila said.

“It’s all about the child, learning to take the ups and downs and connect with people,” Joan commented on the next generation. “I see kids having great fun, parents starting off by bringing them to local shows. When you think of what your parents do for you!”

Including their late father, who arranged a lift back from that Cork show for his children while he drove a draughty lorry home, wearing a pair of socks as makeshift gloves.

They, like many families during the pandemic, faced an uncharacteristic Irish funeral after Jim passed away in May 2020 but were touched by the many messages and socially distanced guards of honour that lined the route. Sometime in the autumn, when the world is back to relative normal, they plan a memorial service for the family man and pillar of Irish show jumping.

“I guess we were lucky. We were brought up well grounded. For us here in Ireland, it’s about meeting people, being kind to everyone and everyone being kind to you.”

A class attitude.