TOM MACGUINNESS should write an autobiography for he has an incredible story to tell. Ironically for someone with a real can-do attitude – it is at the core of his success in business as managing director of the global brand Horseware Ireland and in sport as Ireland’s premier endurance rider at 66 years of age despite only taking up the discipline earlier this decade – MacGuinness did not plan to reach this point. It is just that he doesn’t see an obstacle that can’t be cleared.

Growing up around the family riding school in Dundalk, he was attending Loughry Agricultural College in Tyrone in 1970 when, as he described it in a previous interview, “I had what you might call a spiritual experience. And it changed my life.”