LAST week RTÉ sent out a press release about their “bumper coverage” of the Olympic Games, which officially opens on Friday.

“Coverage of all 17 days across TV, radio and online following Team Ireland’s record-breaking contingent of 133 athletes,” they said.

“Over 250 hours of live coverage on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player with three daily programmes,” the station said.

“Viewers won’t miss a minute,” it added.

Well, fair enough but us fans of equestrian sport have our doubts. The press release named 11 expert commentators who would be in the RTÉ studios to discuss their specialist areas, including swimming, boxing, rowing, athletics and even badminton and hockey. The horses weren’t mentioned.

Apparently you’ll have to subscribe to Discovery+ to watch all the equestrian sport coverage at the Paris Olympics.

Strength in depth

In case you didn’t know, Ireland has qualified teams of show jumpers and cross-country event riders for Paris, along with one dressage rider and a para-dressage team.

We’ve never had such depth in numbers at an Olympics and there are genuine hopes of a medal win.

Two of our show jumping team members – Daniel Coyle and Shane Sweetnam – are ranked in the world’s top 12 right now. The third team member is Cian O’Connor, whose bronze medal in the individual show jumping at the 2012 Games in London remains the only equestrian sport medal Ireland has won at an Olympics to-date.

Last Saturday, The Irish Times devoted a page to a preview of Ireland’s Olympic hopes.

Malachy Clerkin’s article included the briefest of mentions for Coyle, who hails from Derry, and that was it for the horsey set. They didn’t make the cut when it came to ranking Ireland’s six best medal hopes.

In a way, it’s understandable. Equestrian sport is alien to most people, including the media.

With a little imagination you can have a go at most sports in your back garden. If you really want to take up the sport, there is probably a club not too far away.

But you can’t practise equestrian sport without a horse, and that’s expensive and exclusive and the truth is you probably need to be born into it or close to it to have any chance of getting started or being competitive.

That’s a discussion for another day but if Ireland does win a medal in equestrian sport at the Olympics this summer, it will be a good time to think about how the sector can capitalise on this achievement and make equinesport more accessible to the masses and the mainstream media.

Olympic Equestrian Timetable

Eventing

Saturday, 27 July: Dressage, 8.30am

Sunday, 28 July: Cross country, 9.30am

Monday, 29 July: Jumping (team medals), 10am, Jumping (individual medals), 2pm

Dressage

Tuesday, 30 July: Grand Prix Day 1, 9am

Wednesday, 31 July: Grand Prix Day 2, 8am

Saturday, 3 August: Grand Prix Special (team final), 8am

Sunday, 4 August: Freestyle (individual final), 8am

Show jumping

Thursday, 1 August: Team qualifier, 10am