THERE aren't many riders on the international show jumping circuit with a
2:1 degree in politics, economics and philosophy from St Hilda's College, Oxford.
And that isn't the only distinction which can be claimed by one of the headline making competitors in next week's Kerrygold Dublin Horse Show, which starts on Wednesday. Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein, the 22 year old daughter of Jordan's King Hussein, will be the first member of a reigning monarch's family to ride at the show, and the first to raise her country's flag at the RDS.
She has been here for over a year, learning the secrets of the sport in a student cum business relationship with the veteran Irish master of the circuit, Paul Darragh, at his stud in Tara, Co Meath. She has nine horses there and talks knowledgeably lovingly about the merits off established performers like Cera, Quid Pro Quo, Some Day, Affirmative, Scandal and Gandhi, which she shares with Darragh at shows across Europe.
She got her first horse when she was 12, just before being dispatched to boarding school in Britain. Before Oxford, there was a spell with a show jumping establishment in Germany, which explains, she says, why her riding style owes more to the classical German approach than to Arabia.
RDS spokesman David Gray, who has seen her in action, describes her as "a damned fine horsewoman". But she is already fighting butterflies at the prospect of her debut next week.
She will be competing in four events in a show that carries a total prize fund of £230,000 and attracts many of the world's top riders. "The nearer it gets, the more nervous I feel," she says with surprising frankness.
Her 18 year old brother, Prince Ali, currently at Princeton, will be travelling to Dublin to lend family support. "I think I would prefer to send them a video," she jokes, "just in case.
She comes "somewhere in the middle" of the king's 11 children five boys and six girls. Her four older sisters are married, but she has no immediate ambitions to follow suit. Nor has her father encouraged her towards early marriage. "He's very happy that I should want to make my way in the world," she says.
She has taken three year leave of absence from her royal duties to try to establish a show jumping career. Her ambition "and I still have a long way to go" is to ride for Jordan in the Sydney Olympics four years from now.
BEFORE that, however, there is another ambition to be realised riding in the Ladies' Diamond Stud at Ascot. She has already tried her hand at racing, under the expert guidance of trainer Tommy Stack, former jockey of Grand National hat trick hero Red Rum, and has managed two respectable finishes at Kilkenny and the Curragh.
She enjoys Ireland. "I feel the people here have adopted me they're so open and friendly, it's almost like being at home. Our two countries have a great deal in common in our sense of hospitality and respect for tradition." She's hoping for strong local support at the show. "I'll certainly be supporting the Irish," she says. "I always do."