October 12, 2023 
For a relatively small island in the North Atlantic, Ireland occupies a considerable amount of real estate on the Longines World Rankings of show jumping.
At press time, the Emerald Isle boasted no less than six riders in the world top 50—one of only three nations to field more than five riders in that elite group. Their body count jumps to 11 in the world top 100. Only Germany has more.
Yet despite a strong national show jumping tradition and obvious dominance at five-star events the world over, it’s clear that Ireland has a bit of problem with women in its top sport ranks. Namely, there aren’t many.
And there haven’t been for quite some time.
Not convinced? Name a top female Irish show jumper in the last two decades. If you said former World no. 2 Jessica Kürten **ding, ding** good for you! And if you’re currently scratching your head to name another, well, that also tracks. Ireland has not fielded a female show jumper on a senior championship team since Nicola FitzGibbon at the 2011 European Championships. The last appearance at an international championship was Marie Burke at the 2006 World Equestrian Games.
In fact, you’d have to click down four FEI ranking pages and past at least a few Breens and Coyles to get to no. 156 Jessica Burke, Ireland’s top-ranked female show jumper.
Even that is a recent development. Prior to 2023, the last time Ireland had a female show jumper in the world top 200 was in 2016 when Marion Hughes climbed to no. 179. You have to go back to 2014 to find one that cracked the top 100 (Kürten).
And that’s reason to give pause. Why is a country that is clearly adept at developing top talent so deficient in female riders? Particularly when there is no shortage of them at the lower levels.
According to Horse Sport Ireland, “At grassroots level in Ireland show jumping is female-dominated and, on the face of it, the sport operates on a gender-equal footing. Men and women compete against each other as equals—yet at the senior level the sport continues to be male-dominated.”
That imbalance is not uncommon in and of itself. Most of the show jumping superpowers in Europe continue to be male-dominated at the top of the sport. But the disparity is greatest in Ireland—on the current world ranking list, just five of Ireland’s 50 top-ranked riders are women, as compared to nine for Netherlands, 12 for Germany, Belgium and France, 20 for Great Britain and 24 for Austria. (Sweden has 39!)
It follows that, if the grassroots level of show jumping in Ireland is indeed “female dominated,” and the highest levels bereft of women on the podium, then there must be many up-and-coming female riders in the middle searching for that much-needed stepping-stone.
Failure to launch?
Burke, a 31-year-old rider for the U.K.-based Arion Stud near Waterloo, has come up the ranks on quality young horses she produced herself. To wit: she recently put in an impressive performance at the FEI WBFSH Jumping World Breeding Championship, finishing 14th in a field of 40 7-year-olds aboard Good Star Du Bary.
While struggling to get a foothold in her career, the Galway native opted to finish her degree and began working as a math teacher to make ends meet. Her partnership with the now-13-year-old Irish Sport Horse gelding, Express Trend, changed all that—catapulting her into the international spotlight.
Not long after, the BWP mare Nikey HH gave Burke her first senior Nations Cup experience for Ireland this winter in Abu Shabi and Sharjay in the UAE—where the pair jumped 0/4 and 4/4, respectively.
According to a March feature in Horse Sport Ireland in honor of International Women’s Day, Burke says that as a woman, she’s never felt any major barriers in the sport. But she acknowledges the important role women have played in supporting her career. Among them are Arion Stud owner Louisa Church, who previously worked in the male-dominated finance industry, and, according to Burke, actively looks to promote female riders, grooms, and managers in the industry.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Burke says Jessica Kürten was one of her greatest inspirations growing up. She later went to work for Marie Burke, another female Irish rider who represented her country on senior Nations Cup teams in Kürten’s heyday, including at the 2006 World Equestrian Games.
At just 19, Irish rider Niamh McEvoy also aspires to ride for her country. This year, McEvoy was part of the gold medal-winning Irish team (the only female rider, in fact) that stormed the FEI European Championships for Young Riders. She has previously represented Ireland at the CSIO3* Nations Cup at Vejer de Frontera, and broke onto the international stage in 2022 with her 10th place finish in the 1.60m Longines Grand Prix of Ireland with Templepatrick Welcome Limmerick.
It’s a similar trajectory to countrywomen Susan Fitzpatrick (24) and Jenny Rankin (27). Both competed at the European Championships for Young Riders—Rankin finished 11th individually in 2016 and Fitzpatrick, 10th in 2018—and have jumped on 3* Nations Cup teams for Ireland. Neither has yet made the leap to a 5* team and both primarily develop young horses.
Niamh McEvoy is supported by both her family’s Lismore Stables and Greg Broderick’s (IRL) Ballypatrick Stables in Tipperary—where she, too, rides young horses—and this is a key point. Across the sport, for women and men, alike, access to good horses is often what makes or breaks a career.
Before their much-publicized breakup, Kürten was supported by longtime owner Lady Georgina Forbes; Marie Burke owned her top stallion, Chippison, herself.
The moral of the story? It would seem that Ireland—not unlike other countries, the U.S. included—needs more owners, both female and male, that are willing to back the careers of up-and-coming female riders while providing them with access to top coaching and/or horses.
Cultural barriers
While five females in the 50 top-ranked Irish riders is a dismal number in terms of representation, it is an improvement over recent years when Ireland frequently only had one or two in that list, namely Rankin and Fitzpatrick.
“In the past few years, Irish team manager Michael Blake has given many young girls including myself, Jessica Burke, Jenny Rankin and Niamh McEvoy the opportunity to ride on Nations Cup teams and get into 5* shows,” Fitzpatrick told Equitas earlier this year.
But given the historically low numbers of female team riders, it’s impossible not to question the potential for prevailing sexism in the top sport in Ireland, a country with a long tradition of social conservatism compared to other European nations. According to a global survey of 30,890 individuals by the Irish consulting firm Red C, Ireland has one of the worst levels of claimed sexual harassment in Europe. What’s more, 68 percent of women in Ireland report that they believe social attitudes and behaviors always favor men.
Some of this sentiment may underly the age-old stereotype that female equestrians (among other careers) who choose to take time off to have children cannot pursue the demands of elite sport with the same ‘seriousness’ as their male counterparts.
But most would agree that a career in international show jumping cannot be all that dissimilar from, say, a career in international eventing or dressage. In which case, that argument fails to hold water when one looks at the current World no. 1 in both of those disciplines—Rosalind Canter (GBR) and Jessica Von Bredow-Werndl (GER), respectively—both mothers with young children at home. At no. 22, the world’s highest-ranked female show jumper, Laura Kraut (USA), is also a mom.
To be sure, it’s hard to be a fan of show jumping and not feel some sense of respect and awe for the tiny corner of the world where small-yet-fearless school children bravely jump ponies over towering stone walls and 1.35m fences—learning to kick-on and grab mane seemingly from birth. If the results are any indication, Ireland’s storied equestrian tradition is not only romantic, it’s effective.
And yet, for every proud Irish lad who eventually climbs a five-star podium alongside his teammates to make his show jumping dreams a reality, one wonders how many talented Irish girls, waiting there in the wings, might never see their turn.
*This story has been updated to include Irish show jumper Nicola FitzGibbon’s regional championship appearance at the 2011 European Championships in Madrid.
