The Irish show jumping team had the best possible morale booster yesterday in the build-up to this afternoon's crunch Nations Cup decider when chef d'equipe Tommy Wade drew number eight in the starting order, to leave Ireland running last of the octet in for the Samsung final.
"Typical Irish, always winning!", Samsung series director Ulf Rosengren said yesterday. "Everybody wants to avoid number one and everyone wants to get number eight."
The order on the start sheet means the Irish have the benefit of knowing exactly what they have to do and Wade will be keeping a tally on the other seven teams in order to give precise riding orders to his squad.
He has put Cameron Hanley, winner of the King George V Gold Cup and the Kerrygold Grand Prix, first in for Ireland, followed by 18-year-old Neal Fearon and Dermott Lennon, with American-based Kevin Babington as anchorman.
Ludger Beerbaum, whose team have drawn number one and who is still smarting from the constant thrashing that the Irish have given to the Germans over the past few months, did at least add yet another individual feather to his well-stocked cap in the Piazza di Sienna yesterday. Beerbaum scored in the opening jump-off class with the eight-year-old mare Westfalian-bred Gladdys S.
Beerbaum, who brought home a team gold from Sydney but failed to make it into the shake-up for the individual medals, believes that the Irish will be the team to beat in today's Nations Cup final with 10 victories in the current series already to their credit.
"It's going to be very open", he said, "and the teams are a bit mixed up because of the closeness to the Olympics. There's not really one team that is strong, but if there is one team it's the Irish. They haven't been to the Olympics and they have a team here that has already won a couple of Nations Cups during the season."
Drawn second last in yesterday's seven-horse jump-off, Beerbaum sliced off over half a second from the target set by Italian Valerio Sozzi. The appearance of the 31-year-old in the arena came as something of a surprise to the rather sparse crowds, who had read in their morning newspapers that Sozzi had stormed out of the showgrounds on Thursday after being dropped from the Italian team for today's Nations Cup final.
"I'm very hot tempered and I just lost my head," Sozzi said yesterday after riding Gisowatt Pilot High Flight into second place ahead of fellow Italian, Jerry Smit with Jamiro. "I said a lot of things that I shouldn't have said. I wasn't happy with our coach (Duccio Bartalucci), but this is my sport, this is my job and I want to ride."
Sozzi will now face sanctions from the Italian Federation (FISE), which meets next week to discuss the degree of sanctions that will be imposed. "But the fact that Sozzi changed his mind and decided to ride will help his case," FISE president Cesare Croce said at an impromptu press conference yesterday.
