Para-Equestrian Team Success at Hartbury CPEDI 3* International

The Irish Para-Equestrian team exceeded all expectations at the Hartpury CPEDI 3* event. Following the team test on day 1, Ireland was sitting in second place behind Great Britain but the team needed to have a repeat of the first day's success in the individual championship on day 2 in order to secure the silver medal. They succeeded in doing this a won an impressive second place behind the World Champions with a score of 419.992.

This has moved Ireland up the Paralympic Team World Rankings to 5th place, placing the team in a very hopeful position of qualifying a team for the first time at the Paralympic Games for London 2012.

The team of four comprised Eilish Byrne, Rosemary Gaffney, Helen Karney, James Dwyer and reserve Angela Lyons. However, for the first time, a total of nine riders represented Ireland at International competition with two time Paralympian Breda Bernie, young rider Kate Kerr Horgan, Geraldine Savage and Kathryn Wheelock competing in the individual competition. All riders exceeded the minimum FEI Paralympic qualification criteria.

Speaking after the competition, Chef d'Equip Naomi Donoghue congratulated the team commenting "This was a fantastic achievement for the team. Everybody has worked extremely hard and it is great to see consistency across the riders in the team as well as across competitions. This puts us in a strong position to achieve our target to qualify a team for London 2012".