THE drama here in Tryon isn’t letting up.

Since arriving last Friday, there has been multiple days of really intense competition, between the epic eventing finale, and then today, the second round of the show jumping team competition.

As European Championships, everyone, including the riders and management team, believed that this team would come here and produce the goods, gaining their Olympic qualification and bringing home a medal.

And we all still have faith they will absolutely deliver on at least one of those expectations, but there were some nervous moments today when Alan Wade’s course was taking all the jumping. Just five clear rounds from 122 riders – that is only a statistic of 4% clears, and 7.3% if you count the four riders who picked up just one time fault.

Cian O’Connor was under immense pressure heading in to jump as Ireland’s anchor man. There is no better man in that position and Good Luck jumped like the machine he is to keep Ireland in the hunt, and they ended up very well in sixth place.

As Cian was walking out of the ring, French journalist Lucas Tracol, who I met in Morocco last year, commented to me: "This rider is a real champion."

LUIBANTA BH

My horse pick of the day is Amada Derbyshire’s gorgeous Irish Sport Horse mare Luibanta BH (above), who was bred in Co Galway by Justin Burke. The Luidam-sired 10-year-old was unlucky to leave a toe on the tape of the water and was fractions over the time allowed to finish on five faults for Britain.

Amanda is engaged to Irish show jumper David Blake, son of development chef d’equipe Michael. From Lancashire, England, she has been based with the Gochman family in the USA for almost nine years and had never jumped a Nations Cup or a three-star Grand Prix before getting ‘Lulu’ from Ellen Whitaker two years ago.

I caught up with Amanda after her round and she was full of praise for her Irish-bred horse and her breeder. “She was brilliant. A little horse jumping all those big jumps, it’s incredible, she just keeps trying. Justin (Burke) messages all the time, he is so proud of her. I think he actually did an embryo the exact same breeding.”

When her trainer Nick Skelton isn’t around, Amanda gets some help from the father-in-law to be. “Michael will say his two pence, he can’t help but say his two pence,” she said jokingly. “He is always very supportive, I think if he doesn’t want the Irish to win he would want me to win.”

She did mention trying to get David into a Team GB t-shirt… his father might have something to say about that!

Britain fought back from 16th place after round one to finish in ninth place last night so we will get another chance to see this little mare perform again.

'REALLY HOT AND HIGHLY STRUNG'

I will leave you with this very funny clip of Brendan McArdle, who is on official RTÉ radio duty over here, chatting to Hugh Cahill on last night’s Game On.

I’m am turning a blind eye to the ‘ginger’ comment on this occasion, in the interest of good banter.