TEAM Ireland moved up to fourth place on the leaderboard and within a pole of the bronze medal at the Longines FEI European Championships in A Coruña, Spain today.

Three brilliant clear rounds from Michael Blake’s team meant they added nothing to their first day score of 8.39 and are within striking distance of the podium ahead of tomorrow’s (Friday) big team final when just the top 10 teams will battle for the medals.

Santiago Varela built another 14-fence track that did cause its fair share of problems, especially in the triple combination where Britain’s Matt Sampson was eliminated, but overall, riders felt it was a fair test for the second day of a championship.

Sampson aside, Britain’s team of Ben Maher, Donald Whitaker and Scott Brash all jumped clear to remain in the lead on 3.96, ahead of Germany who are on 4.19 after four clear rounds from Marcus Ehning, Sophie Hinners, Christian Kukuk and Richard Vogel. Belgium also held their position in third on 4.61, while Ireland moved from seventh up to fourth.

Day two got underway for Ireland again with pathfinder Denis Lynch jumping a foot-perfect round aboard the 12-year-old stallion Vistogrand, owned by Tipperary’s Finest Est. “That went to plan, it was as I expected. Vistogrand was very good to me; I didn’t get it smooth into the treble somehow and he was good to me there. It's a good course, for the second leg of a championship, it’s a very fair course,” Lynch said.

Denis Lynch and Vistogrand at the FEI European Championships in A Coruña \ Tomas Holcbecher

Seamus Hughes Kennedy has a huge support team at the Spanish seaside venue and he delivered another spectacle for them when producing his second clear of the week with the Ennisnag Stud-bred ESI Rocky (Stakkato Gold x For Pleasure), owned by his mother Clare Hughes.

“Rocky makes it look easy for me. He has so much talent and I am just lucky to be able to ride him. This is a great team with loads of experience; we are trying to take it all in our stride; there is plenty of jumping to do yet. We had three clears for the team today so you can’t ask for much more,” said Hughes Kennedy.

Asked about the course, he added: “The track is quite fair, it’s just long and there are lots of decisions to be made. It’s not over big today, it will be a bit bigger tomorrow.”

Bertram Allen was next to go to with the nine-year-old Ballywalter Farm-owned Qonquest de Rigo and repeated his four-fault round from yesterday when knocking the first part of the double at 11a. “The horse was jumping great; I just didn’t ride good enough but thankfully the boys all did their job and we are in the hunt!”

Speaking about the fault, Allen said: “I added a stride [to the double]… Sometimes when I try to correct him, I over-correct him. He's such a massive horse but then he's very sensitive. It was totally my fault. We are going to have to pull up our socks for tomorrow.”

Darragh Kenny again filled the anchorman role with Eddy Blue and was keen to redeem himself after a mistake in yesterday’s speed class. He duly delivered with a great clear round to keep Ireland well in the hunt ahead of tomorrow’s final.

Speaking afterwards, Kenny said: “I had a weird mistake yesterday…the horse stumbled after the oxer which left me in no man's land to the vertical and he had it down and it ended up costing us a lot in the end. And so we knew that we had to really to get back in the game today. We had to have at least three clears today, we were all pretty motivated and that’s a good result.”

Kenny added about the track: “My horse went quite high in the triple. He actually went a little bit green today and yesterday, which I was surprised about because he's experienced enough but he's never been to a championship before. I was very happy with how he jumped the second half of the course today, so I think he’ll be good tomorrow.”

The remaining teams to make it through to the final were France, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Italy, Denmark and Sweden. The final round kicks off at 4.15pm local time (3.15pm Irish time).

Individuals

After Daniel Coyle’s withdrawal this morning when in the lead, Germany’s Richard Vogel now leads the individual rankings on a score of 0.01 with the wonderful United Touch S. Britain’s Donald Whitaker also stayed on his score of 0.67 to be in second place ahead of Frenchman Julien Epaillard and Donatello d’Auge in third on 0.89.

Best of the Irish individually is Seamus Hughes Kennedy in 12th place on 2.16, just ahead of Denis Lynch in 13th (2.34). Darragh Kenny is lying 25th and Bertram Allen 43rd. The top 25 are all within a single pole of one another.

Individual standings.

Team standings.