“THE funny thing is when you’re travelling all the time, it’s just show after show. It’s only after it’s over when you realise what it all meant to everyone,” said Marie Burke, signing off last year’s feature on Tulla breeder Willie Boland whose ‘Chip’ home-bred line provided her horsepower for European and world championships.

If ever there was a year though for people to have time to look back, it’s 2020. This year will be etched too in her family’s memories for the loss of Jim White, one of the Show Jumping Association of Ireland’s founding members back in 1954.

Jim and his wife Maureen provided an idyllic childhood for their pony-mad family of Marie and her siblings – James, Liam, Joan and Sheila. “We hacked to shows and hunts, there was no other means of transport at that stage. When I started off, you’d ride to the show in Ennis 10 miles away. You wouldn’t dream of riding on that road now, I might add!

“I remember one hunt that ended in Ruan 16 miles away and my little 12.2 pony jogged the whole way home to keep up with my father’s horse,” Marie said, recalling that hack home with Jim, chairman of the County Clare Hunt.

“When my father had a horsebox he’d take a couple of us, the other two would hack halfway and he’d go back to bring them. That was before we got the truck and even then, it was nothing like the trucks today!”

‘I Spy’ games and singsongs were organised by Jim “to keep us all entertained and because there was five kids, we’d travel up in the Luton overhead with our flash lamps, chocolate and a rug over us to keep warm coming home late from shows. It’s funny how you remember those things.”

With the exception of Fine Day, the family made and produced their own ponies. “James was first starting off the ponies, then each of us [Liam and herself] would bring them on a little bit for Joan and Sheila. I jumped Fine Day in the Spring Show, to go to the Spring Show then... oh my goodness, such excitement!” she recalled about their sole schoolmaster, previously campaigned by Eric McNamara, father of this year’s Investec Derby-winning jockey Emmet.

Special one

The White family moved to Richmond Park Stud as, following medical advice, Jim had changed to a wholly equine practice after a bout of chronic brucellosis ended his country vet days. Their Patrickswell yard was filled with “lots of liveries” including one special mare. That was Chipmount, owned and bred by Willie Boland, who played hurling with Jim in their native Tulla and whose first memory of Marie at the local hunt meet was ‘this little lady with a head of red ringlets.’

“Chipmount was the first one I competed internationally. She was difficult,” Marie said tactfully about the Flagmount Boy mare whose bag of tricks included rearing over backwards. As recounted in last year’s West of the Shannon feature, Willie had a choice at the crossroads near the White’s yard of turning left to take Chipmount to be covered by Artic Que or else home to Tulla to let her first round of education sink in.

“He went right and if it wasn’t for that there’d be no Chipmount competing or Chippison. She had great natural ability. Chip A Diamond, her three-parts brother, didn’t have as much scope but I don’t think I’ve ever had a quicker horse. The damline is so important,” she emphasised.

In this pair’s case, their damline went back to the Hail Tarquin mare Little Chip, named after Willie’s mother placed a jar of that marmalade brand on the kitchen table as he filled out the mare’s registration form.

Marie sketched an endearing image of Willie with “his little brown suitcase with the strap around it” on his travels around Europe, following his pair of horses. One of Willie’s prized possessions is a photograph of Marie and Chipmount descending the famous Hickstead Derby bank on one of two Derby appearances.

“There was no social media in those days, you just went and jumped what was in front of you,” said Marie, who remembers stride by stride jumping clear through the Devils Dyke with the brilliant grey mare.

She and Chip A Diamond teamed up with John Ledingham to win the pairs class at Hickstead, where each pair jumped the course side by side. The Diamond Lad bay had both a Hickstead and Dublin win on his C.V. “We won the opening class at Dublin. Chipmount was lame, it was only a drop and luckily, I was able to substitute Chip A Diamond instead. We went relatively early in the class with a lot of horses to go after us.

“There was a young lad from Doora up with us to help at the show and he got so excited, thinking we had it won but I said ‘Sean, there’s a long way to go yet!’ One by one the other riders had slower times, we started to get excited too until the last rider Michael Whitaker had gone and we had won!

“We all lived for Dublin. It was a big deal when we were young to go from Tulla to Dublin, through every town and you’d always get held up in Naas. A lot of changes since!” she said in homage to the country’s motorway system.

Another favourite was the national show jumping championships, first held in 1986. “Salthill was a brilliant show, sure it was like a holiday to us. You had this natural arena for the crowds and the holidaymakers would gather around, watching us tack up horses and putting in studs.”

And then along came Chippison.

Late call up

For the down-to-earth Burke, packing her own wardrobe takes second place planning for shows. Informed at the airport check-in desk that she had a first class ticket, as part of her Spruce Meadows invitation, jeans-wearing Marie opted to travel in economy instead with husband John.

With Chip A Diamond’s Welcome Stakes win came an invitation to a reception hosted by then U.S Ambassador, the late Jean Kennedy Smith. “I didn’t expect that! Sure, you’re living in the back of a horse truck for Dublin but I found something to wear.”

The third wardrobe crisis happened after her 11th hour addition to the Irish team for the 2006 FEI World Equestrian Games. “I got a very late call-up, I was driving to Kilkenny to freeze semen when I got a call to be ready and I was going out as number five. It was all rush, rush to get ready to go and then, as it was so late, I got Jessica Kürten’s stuff to wear!

“I was in Hickstead when I got the call that I was on the longlist for Aachen. I was doing my own thing, I’d even done the Spruce Meadows tour for six weeks the summer before. I was very lucky that John agreed and we funded it ourselves as it wasn’t that cheap to go out there. I think it was the making of me and him [Chippison] that I’d prepared enough to go into another big ring at Aachen.”

Burke and Chippison had placed third in the Longines Dublin Grand Prix earlier in August and after their team reserve call up, they set off for Germany. Arriving a day early, they were diverted to part of the cross-country course. “Joan’s husband, Pat Greene was my groom and I remember Pat remarking ‘It could be Newmarket on Fergus show!’ as we pulled up in the field. We ended up staying at Lesley McNaught’s yard that night.

“The team were allowed to go into the ring to warm up but I didn’t even jump a fence on Chippison as I knew he wouldn’t concentrate with the other horses. I just let him eat a bit of grass and let him relax in the arena. I just knew my horse.”

Then with Cian O’Connor’s Waterford Crystal withdrawn after an injury, the Banner pair were finally on the team alongside Shane Breen (World Cruise), Cameron Hanley (SIEC Hippica Kerman) and Billy Twomey (Luidam). “In fairness to Cian, he would always say ‘Be ready to jump. Always be ready’.”

Joan and Sheila travelled to Aachen to watch Marie get off to a dream start, placing ninth in the opening speed round. “We knew what the horse could do. Robert [Splaine, chef d’equipe] had told us just to go for a clear. It was just a flowing round more than a fast round.

“The next day, the first round of the Nations Cup, he lost a shoe halfway round on the approach to the combination. It had rained a lot and the ground was very slippy, I remember him slipping on take-off at the first part of the combination but I didn’t know the front shoe was gone. It was the first time with Chippison I felt I had to work hard, everything had always felt so easy for him. Even for him to slip at the first part but still jump clear through the other two parts of the combination was a great achievement for him.

“He came out the next night under lights and jumped that same course clear. I always remember coming out from that clear round thinking, ‘Oh God, that was worth keeping him!’ Obviously we had chances of selling him but for me it was a measure of his brilliance that he came out and jumped that clear round after the previous night.”

Having boosted the Irish team to overall sixth place with this performance, Chippison – one of five Irish Sport Horses show jumping at those Games – and his unassuming rider qualified for the individual final.

“I went into the final and I think nearly everyone was riding the horse at this stage and giving me different advice! I’m not ‘blaming’ that on it but I know I met the water fence wrong and he kind of ran through it, the combination came up straightaway afterwards and we had two or three parts of that wrong. The horse was upset, he knew, and of course I knew, we’d done something wrong,” said Marie, who finished 24th.

“Even for me to have that four faults in the Nations Cup round I was so disappointed. I remember the team and Robert were so delighted but me, I was disgusted as I felt I’d let the team down. We’d had such a good year that year that I’d expected plenty from my horse because I knew he was good,” she said about her ‘big arena’ specialist.

Part of the family

“We bred him, we travelled up and down to [vet] John Hughes to get that embryo. He was one of the first embryos, so we had him from the start,” she said about Chipmount’s embryo transfer foal, gifted to them by Willie Boland.

“For sure, he was part of the family and that is why he was never for sale as such. People will say we were mad [not to sell] but he didn’t cost us a fortune, we were doing something we loved and I was very lucky to get that far and do all that with him.

“You have to give him credit. Obviously I’m not a professional at that level at all at all, by any means and having just one horse at that level it’s very hard to compete at that level. I think people didn’t realise what a good horse he really was.”

The icing on that year’s cake were two awards at the Showjumpers Ball for International Showjumper and the Paul Darragh Special Achievement accolade, of particular significance as the late Darragh was one of Marie’s trainers.

One highlight of their international career was their 2006 Lisbon Grand Prix runner up result. “Richmond Park (Coevers Diamond Boy) won it, he’d have been a horse that Sheila produced and Rodrigo Pessoa was riding him. There was less than a second between the two horses and at that time there was over 90 horses in that Grand Prix. My parents were there too which was special.”

More results included the winning Nations Cup team cap at Lummen that springtime, winning the 2007 Longines Classic at Hickstead and then there was third place in the Arezzo Grand Prix, won by Katie Monahan Prudent (USA). Marie and Chippison competed in the individual classes at the 2007 European championships.

“I had a great Mannheim, we were second and third, he jumped great there. We ended up doing about 14 Nations Cups over the years; Copenhagen, Falsterbo, Drammen and Barcelona a good few years.”

Exposure

However, as Marie was to discover, overseas wins paled in comparison to home ground wins exposure. “There was no social media then like there is now and no matter what you did abroad, you had to do it at home to promote the stallion. I remember winning a Grand Prix at Cavan and there were more farmers on about using him after that 1.40m class.”

With his performance record, does she think the Cavalier Royale son was sufficiently supported by Irish breeders? “I suppose we didn’t capitalise on it enough. Again, social media wasn’t what it is now and he had no progeny on the ground in comparison,” she said about two marketing drawbacks. Then there was the growth in easier access to frozen semen from continental-based stallions and what she philosophically terms a ‘far away fields are greener’ preference towards more fashionable stallions.

“The biggest thing though was we couldn’t prove the damline. She [Chipmount] died having her next foal after him and Cavalier wasn’t approved at the time. We could never get it [pedigree] recorded although the Horse Board did allow him as a five-star stallion with his performance record.”

Changes in horse sales are another topic. “Your livery owners were often farmers hoping to qualify their horse for Dublin. You had, say, the Grade E ticket system where you got six tickets and your best four results could get you to Dublin. It was much easier to sell then, you had [Graziano] Mancinelli and Max Hauri. Vere Phillips is brilliant too.

“That’s the biggest problem now, trying to get horses through the vet. There’s so many different opinions on these x-rays.

“They should take into consideration what the horse is being vetted for. What difference does it make if a horse is making a little bit of a noise if he’s going to be jumping with an amateur rider up to a certain level or if he had a splint that never caused him any problem? A vet has to put that down, they’re afraid of being sued if they don’t put XYZ on the cert but people have to realise that they’re not buying a horse to jump the world championships, this is not going to affect the horse’s performance.”

Loss of a father

One of the pandemic’s cruellest aspects in the Irish way of life are the limited funeral arrangements in place. Jim passed away in May and his family intend to hold a memorial service and bury his ashes at a future date.

“It will be a little bit of closure for my mother, they were married for 60 years. We had Mass and then we went, via Tulla, to the crematorium. If you saw the way people lined the streets to give him a great send off. Willie Boland was there in Tulla, they were great buddies. My brother James couldn’t get home from Los Angeles. He’d have to go into quarantine for two weeks, a week here and two more weeks quarantine then… he’d have no job. They don’t hold a job open for five weeks in America.”

Jim White’s SJI Roll of Honour (2015) and his induction into the Showjumpers Club Hall of Fame (2019) are deeply appreciated by his family. “It was great to get them on time and to have him acknowledged, great credit to everyone involved,” said Marie gratefully.

Things are getting back to the new normal at Clare Equestrian Centre. “We were stopped in the middle of the [spring] league but we got a good few horses running. I enjoy doing what I do, producing horses and I’m doing a lot of coaching.

“We have 40 horses, between liveries and our own, including eight broodmares. Some are Chippison daughters and we’d leave them foal late enough. The routines didn’t change as such, horses still had to be fed! John manages the riding school and we’ve sold off a few of the riding school ponies, mainly because we have too many irons in the fire.

“Insurance is hard to get and I can see that way of life going a little. When we were growing up, we did Pony Club games, we’d leapfrog over the rump, ride the ponies bareback – it made us as riders, that’s how we grew up but now people are afraid of accidents.”

Their Doora base is where Tara Flynn started back in the saddle after her life-changing accident. “Her mum Mary and family deserves such credit. To see where she’s got to, back competing again, is incredible.”

John’s brother Vincent was another well-known campaigner on the show jumping circuit with his ‘Brew’ horses. “As kids, we spent so much time at Ballycar between Pony Club games, Halloween shows and hunting, we had great times there. John and I grew up together and he drove Vincent around when he started off. John’s father and uncle Kevin Ballycar teach all the kids and yes, that’s where The Gray Goose came from!” she replied when asked about that1982 Rolex Kentucky winner’s background.

Brian, their son, has switched to horsepower of another kind. “He travelled to many of the shows with us but because of all the travel he didn’t get the opportunity to compete. He’s driving tractors now, he went to New Zealand and America too.” For Brian, Mannheim means one thing. “The home of John Deere!” said his mother who went to Mannheim and a host of European cities during her time in the sun.

“We just never had the money to buy the top ponies and horses. Thanks to my dad, we achieved as much as we did.”