I STARTED going to watch horse shows 65 years ago, in 1951. I’ve been continuously competing since 1954. I’ve been to the Belmont, the Preakness, Madison Square Garden, Devon, Burghley, Badminton, the Bromont Olympics, Wellington, the Tevis Cup, and Rolex Kentucky.

I pretty much assumed there weren’t many surprises left but the Dublin Horse Show is “better.”

Better how? I’ve been thinking about that question in the week since I got back to Vermont from Dublin.

The first impression I got as a first-time visitor, is the physical setting of that park within a city, the tall trees, the bright green grass, the clock tower, the vast grandstands, the myriad shops, the throngs of people, the roars of applause, the cadence of the announcers, the sheer number of rings and arenas and stables. Other settings have pieces of what Dublin has, but Dublin has all of them.

Then there is the enormous variety of the riders, from tiny children on tiny ponies, all the way to Olympic medal winners, not separated into disparate groups, like at the Olympics, but all jumbled together and intermingling.

I watched seven and eight-year-old kids in one ring, barely posting, then walked for three minutes to watch Grand Prix riders from the teams of many countries galloping over oxers so high and wide that if you put roofs over them, you could live in them for the winter.

This is not to say that every rider I watched was a Michael Jung.

generalisation

Years ago, when I was competing internationally for the United States Equestrian Team (USET), I heard a sort of joking wild generalisation about the difference between national riding styles. My US team coach Jack Le Goff said that the riders from the six English-speaking countries – Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, England and Ireland – could gallop, but they couldn’t canter.

The continental European riders could canter, but they couldn’t gallop.

“So,” Jack said, “We need to learn how to ride better in dressage, and the Germans need to learn how to ride better in cross country.”

And I saw evidence at Dublin that 40 years later, Jack’s words are still true. I saw draw reins in the jumper rings, faulty rider positions, over-flexed horses, all the usual riding sins. But that’s normal. It’s hard to learn to ride very well and there are never many top riders, ever, in any country, at any time.

My third general impression was that the spectators – and there were so many that at times it was like shuffling along a packed city side walk – seemed more generally knowledgeable about horses than their North American counterparts.

Horses are a much bigger deal in Ireland than in America. They are fundamentally woven into the history and culture and fabric of daily life. The USA is becoming urban and suburban at an exponential pace, so that entire generations are far removed from horses, apart from watching the Budweiser Clydesdales on Super Bowl TV ads, or vaguely knowing that American Pharoah won the Triple Crown.

And finally, the horses.

For as long as I can remember, the phrase “Irish horse” has been synonymous with the qualities of courage and boldness, calm generosity of spirit, physical soundness, and striking presence and beauty.

Over the last 10 years or so, even thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean, we in America have been hearing rumblings about how fundamental changes have been taking place in Irish sport horse breeding to accommodate changes in the requirements of modern sport.

The whole week I was in Dublin, I heard breeders and owners and riders express different, sometimes contradictory, views on this subject.

I co-judged four classes at Dublin – four-year-old event horses, five-year-old event horses, small event horses and a hunter class of three teams riding Connemaras.

Chris Ryan was the announcer for several of these classes and, from listening to his running commentaries, what he doesn’t know about sport horse breeding would fit in a shot glass.

bloodlines

Chris explained, in simplistic terms, his take on current Irish breeding programs. First, said Chris, there are what we might call traditionalists. These breeders stick to the three traditional Irish breeds, the thoroughbred, the Registered Irish Draft (RID) and the Connemara, or crosses among these three.

Then there are the “middle of the roaders.” These breeders maintain a traditional Irish base, but are not averse to mixing in European warmblood bloodlines, such as Holsteiner, Hanoverian, Oldenburg, Trakhener.

A third group of Irish breeders might be called “pragmatists.” They don’t care what the bloodlines are, so long as they produce foals which win and sell for a profit.

They might import a warmblood mare from Germany, Belgium or Holland, breed her by frozen semen to a warmblood stallion, and register the foal as “Irish-bred” by virtue of having been foaled in Ireland, though its pedigree may not have any traditional Irish blood.

Where these breeding wars will go is anybody’s guess, but from my perspective as a judge, there were plenty of lovely and talented event horses, regardless of the “purity” or lack thereof, of old-fashioned Irish bloodlines. The modern event horse needs to have no missing links. It has to have lovely gaits for dressage, and a temperament calm enough to get at those gaits.

It needs to be bold and reasonably fast for cross-country. It can’t run out of gas three-quarters of the way on a big advanced track in heat or in sloppy footing, so stamina and endurance still count.

top of the tree

It needs to be sound enough to pass the vet jog the morning of show jumping, and finally, it needs to be careful and scopey enough to leave all the rails in their cups on Sunday afternoon.

Irish-bred event horses have been at the top of the tree for decades and Irish breeders are smart and canny. They want to produce foals that can go on and win and we saw lots of youngsters full of promise.

It’s been said that the horse industry can be compared to a table with four legs, the breeder, the owner, the rider, and the trainer.

Most horse shows leave out the breeder. But not at Dublin. By integrating the breeding classes as key components of the show, Dublin has set itself beyond and apart from its main rivals, whether a stroke of organising genius or just a part of a national heritage, I couldn’t say.

The Dublin Horse Show was a shifting kaleidoscopic array of duns, pintos, bays, greys, chesnuts, thoroughbreds, cobs, Connemaras, Irish Draughts, Holsteiners, Hanoverians and every mix and match.

It had tiny brave riders, lithe riders, old riders, the entire range of ages, body shapes and competence levels, where the commonality is courage. Dublin is a glittering mosaic unrivalled, as far as I can tell, anywhere in the world, where horse lovers gather.

Denny Emerson was the 1972 United States Eventing Association (USEA) Rider of the Year and former president of the association