TWO and four-legged Irish Olympic athletes have started to arrive in Rio de Janeiro in advance of the 2016 Olympic Games, which are scheduled to open with a spectacular ceremony next Friday night, August 5th.

Ireland’s eventing squad had their final training sessions with dressage and show jumping coaches Ian Woodhead and Comdt. Gerry Flynn this week at Waresley Park Stud in Cambridgeshire, where sports psychologist Niamh Fitzpatrick was also on hand.

After a final check of the team horses – Cooley Rorke’s Drift, Euro Prince, Jemilla, Simon Porloe and travelling reserve Portersize Just A Jiff – by team veterinary surgeon Hugh Suffern and farrier Nigel Perrott, the horses left on board a Peden Bloodstock-chartered flight. Suffern was the FEI’s official veterinary surgeon who travelled with the cargo load of mainly UK-based event horses and they were scheduled to touch down in Rio last night. Two more planeloads of event horses will depart from Liege and Miami.

Waiting for the Irish horses in Rio are their grooms: Jane Felton, Stephanie Abbott, Amy Kisby, Gemma Fuller and Bridget Speirs. They, together with eventing team manager Nick Turner, flew out from Heathrow on Wednesday.

The team members – Jonty Evans, Clare Abbott, Mark Kyle, Padraig McCarthy and Camilla Speirs – left Dublin Airport yesterday evening for a connecting flight from Frankfurt and the final piece of the logistics jigsaw fell into place when 2.5 tonnes of equipment, feed and forage for the Irish team was loaded onto a cargo plane at Stansted on Thursday.

Greg Broderick reports that MHS Going Global is “in top form” at home after their double clear in the Nations Cup last Friday. Broderick will have a Rio carnival-style send-off when he competes at the Jumping in the City event at Shelbourne Park next Friday night.

Another Irish-bred eventer will be in the line-up at the Deodoro Olympic Equestrian Centre, where the first day of dressage begins next Saturday, August 6th, as Mighty Nice replaces Fernhill Cubalawn. The Ard Ohio gelding, previously competed here by Joseph Murphy steps up after Philip Dutton’s original first choice horse for the US team picked up an injury during training.

There has also been a change of horse for reigning champion Michael Jung. His first choice horse Fischer Takinou, a double gold medal winner at last year’s European championships in Blair Castle, was ruled out after picking up an infection.

Jung, however, is in the enviable position of having La Biosthetique Sam FBW as his back-up horse and the 16-year-old, this year’s Badminton winner, is bidding to become only the third horse in Olympic eventing history to win back-to-back titles.

Michael Whitaker had a setback in the run up to this week’s Hickstead meeting after a schooling accident at home earlier this week which left the Yorkshire-born veteran of four Olympic Games with cracked ribs.

He was named on the British show jumping team for Rio with Cassionata and planned to compete in some of the remaining classes at Hickstead over the weekend after sitting out yesterday’s Nations Cup competition.