The confirmation that Ireland will not, after all, be hosting the World Equestrian Games next year, will be greeted with great disappointment by many - and not just by bloodstock afficionados. The continued and much lamented absence of a fully-fledged national sports stadium means that this State gets few enough opportunities to host top-class international sports events. To our collective shame, Dublin is one of the few European capitals that does not play host to the athletics Grand Prix series while our prospects of hosting the likes of a European Champions League soccer final remain distinctly remote. The World Equestrian Games at Punchestown, Co Kildare, appeared to provide an ideal opportunity to redress the balance; a prestigious international equestrian event was to take place in perhaps its most natural habitat, in a country renowned for its love of horses. If this was the theory underpinning the Irish plan to host the games, the reality was rather more prosaic. It was never entirely clear how the huge cost of mounting the games - budgeted at over £9 million - would be recouped. Disputes about the level of TV interest in the games and, critically, the withdrawal of Nissan as title sponsors earlier this year, raised very serious doubts about the wisdom of hosting the event in the first place. Against this background, the Government's refusal to provide further financial aid for the organising company closed the book on a troubled episode in Irish sport.
There will certainly be those who argue that the Government should not have been so rash; that Government funding has been found for less deserving cases (one thinks of the public money used to support a Steve Collins title fight in Millstreet) and that ministers should have looked to the wider benefits for tourism and for Ireland's international image of hosting such an event. But this is to ignore the very considerable investment that the State has already made. Some £750,000 of public money - more than enough to fund some desperately needed recreational facilities for some drug-ravaged communities in Dublin's inner-city - has already been spent. The Government is also liable for the £1.25 million performance bond pledged by Bord Failte when Ireland originally secured the rights to host the games. The reality is that the Government had no alternative but to cut its losses at this point. There was a very real risk that the games would suffer a huge financial loss, there was no assurance of the kind of global TV audience first envisaged and there was diminishing confidence that the event would attract significant tourist revenues. Certainly, the troubled history of the World Equestrian Games since their inception in 1990, does not inspire confidence. The inaugural games lost £1.5 million while the last games, staged in the Netherlands after the French Government pulled out, were also a financial disaster. It may be that the concept behind the games - bringing together a wide number of disciplines and requiring the support of at least 3,000 volunteer staff - is itself over ambitious and deeply flawed.