EQUESTRIAN/World Games: Marie Burke was the saviour of the Irish show jumping team at the world games here in Germany yesterday, galloping to a top-10 placing, despite being drafted on at the last minute when Cian O'Connor's horse Waterford Crystal went lame.

The 42-year-old Co Clare rider, who was named as reserve for Aachen when Marion Hughes' horse, Heritage Transmission, was ruled out of contention with a leg problem, was promoted from the subs bench to earn her first championship cap yesterday morning and more than justified her place on the team.

Burke had the home-bred stallion Chippison firing on all cylinders yesterday as she cruised to an immaculate clear in the opening speed round, stopping the clock on 81.04 seconds to take a temporary hold on second place and give a massive boost to team morale.

That had taken a considerable knock when O'Connor's Waterford Crystal was diagnosed with a strained fetlock by team vet Marcus Swail on Monday evening, only hours after being passed sound at the official veterinary inspection.

"We could have got him right, but there's so much jumping to be done, if the horse wasn't 100 per cent we could have been left with a three-man team, so we withdrew him," O'Connor said yesterday morning. "I'm severely disappointed, but the horse comes first."

"It would've been a high-risk exercise to keep him in," Swail said before the start of yesterday's competition. "Our best option was to withdraw him. Everybody was in agreement with that."

The strategy paid off in dramatic style, however, with Burke producing exactly the sort of result that gives Ireland a chance of the top-five finish required to guarantee qualification for the Beijing Olympics.

"He was pure class," a delighted Burke said as she rode out of the massive Aachen arena that has caused many far more experienced riders' nerves to freeze.

"I was just going for a nice round, but he's deceptively fast."

Chippison's turn of foot, combined with a class round from Irish pathfinder Shane Breen, put Ireland in the lead at the lunch break.

But as the world's best galloped round the 13-fence track, setting ever faster times despite deteriorating ground conditions, the Irish team slid to eighth of the 25 teams at the close of play, but still well in touch with the leading Dutch and Americans.

"We're still in with a fighting chance," team manager Robert Splaine said last night. "The first two teams have a fence in hand, but the rest are within one fence of us."

Breen's performance was all the more remarkable as his horse, World Cruise, had been suffering from colic on Sunday night.

Swail moved Vinnie Duffy's 11-year-old to the Aachen veterinary clinic for treatment and the grey responded so well that he was back in form for yesterday's baptism of fire, when just a foot in the water added four seconds to an otherwise flawless round for eventual 31st.

Cameron Hanley and Billy Twomey are slightly further off the pace, with Hanley in 42nd after a knock coming out of the double of water ditches, and Twomey 68th with eight seconds to add for two fences down.

So despite starting without Jessica Kürten and Marion Hughes, despite reigning world champion Dermott Lennon having to forgo the chance to defend his title, and despite the loss, at the 11th hour, of O'Connor, the Irish team has come out with all guns blazing here in Aachen.

Just two rounds of Nations Cup show jumping over the next two days stand between them and a place on the 2008 Olympic startlist.