THERE was widespread sadness in the Irish equestrian community on Wednesday following the death of the hugely influential Joan Keogh who will be laid to rest today (Saturday) following her requiem Mass at 1pm in St’s Mary and Patrick’s Church, Avoca, Co Wicklow.

Joan is deservedly hailed as the most influential person in the history of Dressage Ireland as she founded the association – then call the Irish Dressage Society - at the Spa Hotel, Lucan in 1989.

Born Joan Donohoe in Dublin, she lived in Leeson Park Avenue until her father bought Stepaside Stables in 1953 and in an interview in this paper in April 2021, Joan fondly remembered her weekly riding lessons at the Bel-Air Hotel when she was a boarder at the Dominican College in Wicklow.

She married Michael Keogh in 1960 and in 1967, the couple and their five children moved to Spruce Lodge in Kilternan, Co Dublin where she thought many riders after passing her BHSAI examination at Burton Hall.

Her first involvement with the then Irish Horse Trials and Dressage Society (now Eventing Ireland) was through her youngest child, Aidan, competing at events. She became chairperson of the IHTS dressage committee and soon realised that the discipline was the “poor relation” of the sport and this eventually led her to organise that inaugural meeting of the Irish Dressage Society, with its name changed to Dressage Ireland in the mid-90s.

Joan was also one of the founding members of the Association of Irish Riding Clubs. With Helen Mangan, she visited the British Horse Society in Stoneleigh to seek permission to set up the Association of Irish Riding Clubs structure to mirror theirs and the AIRC was born. She was also influential in writing the equestrian coaching syllabus alongside Gerry Mullins and William Micklem. It was then adopted by the FEI and delivered worldwide.

A member of the original group who travelled to Sweden in the late 1990s to look at setting up an umbrella body for equestrian sports in Ireland, Joan welcomed the setting up of Horse Sport Ireland in 2008.

Joan and Michael sold their property in Kilternan in 2007 and moved to Wicklow where they set up the “new Spruce Lodge” which, in her own words, was “a training facility to give back to the sport, a nice place to come and train in a non-commercial atmosphere”. It was there that the para dressage riders trained before the London 2012 Olympic Games, where they won team bronze and an individual silver.

Sadly, her husband Michael died in 2010 and Joan resigned from all committees in 2016 having been diagnosed with Farmers Lung.

Joan passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by her loving family. She will be lovingly missed by her children Brendan, Helen, Deirdre, Declan and Aidan and was a much loved sister of Sheila, Vincent and the late Brian, Eugene and Laura.