Hunting, in this house, it’s what we do. Christmas and the new year is our busiest time of the year. St Stephens Day is a huge local event, we’d get up to 1,200 or 1,300 people on horses and on foot for the meet on the edge of Knockcarron, Co Limerick. From Knockcarron Hill you get a great view of the hounds at work. People come from the UK, US and a fair few too from continental Europe to see it – it is a huge injection and massive boost for the local economy.

Historically the St Stephen’s Day meet around here has a lot of tradition, it’s a tremendous meeting place for people, getting them outdoors for a couple of hours.

We’re just absolutely blessed with the reception we get from locals and farmers.

I’m a farmer myself and I’d often make upwards of 30 house calls in advance of a meet and you’re meeting everybody, the farmers and landowners, on a regular basis.

The amount of kids coming out hunting is massive. To get them away from computer screens and iPads into the fresh air, to see them crossing country, is just fantastic. We’ve a group of youngsters out with us at the moment, 12, 13, 14 years of age and I haven’t seen a group as good since the likes of Shane and Trevor Breen.

If those youngsters want to make equestrianism a full-time job, they’d have no problem doing it.

However, there is a degree of an uncertain future for the next generation, where are the nagsmen going to come from? The farriers? Where’s farming going to be in the next five to 10 years when you see current strife of the suckler farmer?

But when I see the calibre of the kids, thank goodness for their interest.

Love for the horse

The grá, the real love for the horse is huge. You see the top jumping and eventing riders around the world coming from Ireland and the base education they get, the feel for the horse, is second to none. And a lot of that is coming out of the hunting field. The traditional horse is part of that culture, part of that history as well.

Funnily enough, I think hunting has had a huge effect on horses, particularly the traditional-breds. Over years and years and generations of crossing banks and ditches, it’s given the horse that ability to cross country and brought on an automatic reflex in the horse to shorten and lengthen.

TIHA

If you look at Traditional Irish Horse Association (TIHA) chair Hugh [Leonard] when he’s talking about horses, you can feel the passion, you can feel the love of the traditional-bred horse, he just lives and breathes it.

All the TIHA committee members are the same but we’re lucky to have Hugh at the helm. He has everything we love in the traditional horse: the character, the twinkle in his eye, longevity, the soundness. He’s been blessed with health, thanks goodness and the traditional horse is very, very lucky to have him.

Continental breeders have a fair lead on us and looking at genetics, the other studbooks are so far ahead, that’s what’s given us the lag time.

Most mares are going to continental stallions because most breeders have to sell as foals. And there’s no doubt that the continental-cross foal is an easier sell than the traditional, which, by its nature, is slow maturing. To get some of these top traditional genetics into the next generation, the TIHA came up with some very kind sponsorship to finance a scheme. For one year, these top traditional mares would visit a thoroughbred or traditional stallion so we can carry those genetics into the next generation, which is hugely important.

Amazing statistic

When it comes to the eventing studbook rankings, I’m not a great believer in coincidence. I love the analytics of it and statistics do paint a picture. It’s by no accident that Ireland has led the WBFSH studbook rankings for 23 out of the past 26 years – that is an amazing statistic.

Traditional breeding was up there, you had Brookpark Vikenti, Imperial Sky and Ivar Gooden, who is missing a bit of pedigree on the dam’s side. Then you had Rioghan Rua out of a pure traditional dam.

We bought McKinlaigh [the individual silver medallist, by Highland King, at the 2008 Olympics with Gina Miles (US)] as a three-year-old out of Goresbridge.

What was it about him? A horse has to make an instant first impression, almost a gut feeling, so that many boxes in your head are getting ticked very quickly, a natural balance and lightness on the ground. McKinlaigh was a big horse, 17.1hh, but you wouldn’t hear him trotting down the yard. And a great mind. Even as a three-year-old when you looked into McKinlaigh’s eye, there was so much there.

Tom Schulz was over at Punchestown where McKinlaigh was in the young horse class, he won a lot here as a four-year-old and McKinlaigh was then shipped out to the US. He’s 25 now, inducted into the Hall of Fame and having a gorgeous retirement in California where I’ve visited him twice.

No, I’m not going to Tokyo, I wish I was! Dad [Thady] was chef d’Equipe there in 1964, he did there and Mexico but my only experience of Tokyo was that I there twice for the Japan Cup.

It will take a very good horse to beat fischerChipmunk, he wowed me from the get-go when I first saw him in Strzegom with Julia Krajewski. He’s by Contendro, who covered over 2,000 mares, out of a Heraldik mare and if he has a ‘fault’, he’d need just that one more ounce of blood for [five star] Badminton and Burghley, but Tokyo is a four star. With Michael Jung on board, they’ll be hard to beat.

Top training

It was great to see Michael at the recent Goresbridge Go For Gold sales buying a couple of traditional-breds – to get them into his hands is tremendous.

I think Andrew Hoy with the Jaguar Mail horse Vassily de Lassos could be on the Olympic podium too. And on his current form, look at Cathal Daniels. It was absolutely brilliant to see him on the European championships podium with Jung and Ingrid Klimke. He’s won two indoor eventing competitions at Geneva and Stuttgart recently, this fellow is amazing.

What the Irish eventing team did at the World Championships [winning a team silver medal] was no accident. Top horses with top training, that’s not an accident. We’ve just got to wait and see what horses are available and if our top horses are in top form.

The Japanese team is shaping up, Yoshiaki Aiwa and Kazuma Tomoto are top-class jockeys and we saw what the Japanese rugby team did in the World Cup.

Rio and the travel that went with it knocked the bejasus out of some horses. What is very much in the American thinking [for Tokyo] is a very blood horse with a quick natural recovery time. I’m lucky to get abroad to hear opinions and catch up on genetics and I can work as an ambassador for the Irish horse wherever I go. There is no doubt the Irish horse has a place in the hearts of Americans.

I love being at home too, to get to training events, to try and spot a horse. Dublin is our Croke Park, our Aviva Stadium and has a massive shape on our industry; look at the performance classes now for Connemaras, Irish Draughts and the young event horse classes with their tremendous graduates. Well done to the RDS, it’s a huge, huge shop window.

Chris Ryan was in conversation with Susan Finnerty.