SHOW JUMPING:THE OLYMPIC Council of Ireland yesterday approved the nomination of Cian O'Connor as the second Irish rider in show jumping at the London Olympics.

O’Connor was nominated by Horse Sport Ireland, after the governing body decided on Monday not to proceed with its nomination of Denis Lynch, who had been one of the two choices of HSI’s show jumping team manager Robert Splaine.

Ireland will now be represented by Cork-born Billy Twomey riding Edwin and Sue Davies’s mare Tinka’s Serenade, and O’Connor, who will partner the 12-year-old Blue Loyd 12. The Meath-based rider owns the German-bred gelding in partnership with a syndicate which was established less than a year ago to buy Blue Loyd with London very much in mind.

Lynch’s nomination was withdrawn following a meeting in Dublin on Monday when HSI’s monitoring committee found itself not satisfied with the rider’s explanation for why his horse, Lantinus, who he had partnered as a member of the Irish team which had finished third in the Nations’ Cup at Aachen on Thursday, was disqualified from the remainder of the five-star German show having been considered hypersensitive within Annex XI of the FEI veterinary regulations.

Lynch was free to continue competing at the show and did so, finishing 13th on his intended London mount, Abbervail van het Dingeshof, in Sunday’s Grand Prix.

Ireland didn’t qualify a team for this year’s Olympics but, through the performances of Lynch and Twomey, two individual places were secured at the Games and the pair, who are the highest-ranked Irish riders in the FEI world standings, were selected for nomination to the OCI early last week.

Yesterday, HSI’s chief executive Damian McDonald, said: “We made a very hard decision on Monday . . . we had concerns that weren’t addressed.”

He explained that because a horse of Lynch’s had tested hypersensitive for the third time in 12 months it was decided to withdraw the rider’s nomination to the OCI. He cited the proximity of the Games as an additional reason for the withdrawal.

O’Connor was stripped of the gold medal he won at the 2004 Athens Olympics when two human drugs were found in a urine sample taken from his horse Waterford Crystal. Commenting on his nomination for London, McDonald stated that the rider had “no infringements of any rules since then whatsoever”.

O’Connor and Blue Loyd were also on the Nations’ Cup team at Aachen and the horse appears to be hitting peak form at just the right time. He had a pole down in the first round of the German Nations’ Cup, regarded as the top annual team event in the world, and returned to record Ireland’s second clear of the competition following that of the Twomey-partnered Je t’Aime Flamenco.

After the competition O’Connor expressed his satisfaction with the two rounds. “Blue Loyd and I are only together seven months and I really think we are starting to gel. It takes a while to build a partnership, but you can see how it is developing by tonight’s performance.

“Aachen is the biggest Nations’ Cup in the world and Blue Loyd jumped it easily.”