Nerves of steel would not, by her own admission, have been a phrase traditionally associated with west Cork-rider Trish Donegan. Not until the Sydney Olympics that is. But the 26-year-old from Bandon came into her own at the Horsley Park equestrian venue this week, producing a stunning performance from the eight-year-old Don't Step Back that has been the talk of the Games.
A personal best in the dressage, followed by a sensational clear on their first outing round a four-star cross-country course and then a foot-perfect show jumping round left the Irish duo up with the best in the world. Had the individual competition still been run in tandem with the teams, as was traditional until Atlanta, Donegan would have missed a top-10 placing by just one slot.
As it was, she led the team to an overall fifth-place finish that guarantees Ireland a spot on the starting grid for the 2002 world equestrian games in Jerez and, barring any unforeseen occurrences, Donegan and Don't Step Back will be flying the Irish flag out in Spain as well.
It was a superb result for Donegan, whose nerves have not always been the icy cool ones she displayed in Horsley Park. "I surprised myself," she said, after completing her first Olympic outing with more than just flying colours. "Normally at competitions I get wound up, but since all this began I've been as cool as a breeze."
It was that new-found quality, teamed up with the apparently endless talent of Joe and Margaret Savage's giant grey, that this week shifted Donegan and Don't Step Back out of the realms of international runners into the stratosphere that contains such legendary Olympic partnerships as Mark Todd and Charisma and Blyth Tait with Ready Teddy.
The link with Don't Step Back came about through an introduction to Joe Savage at Punchestown in 1993, just after Donegan had ridden the mare Corranpierre to victory. P J Lehane, a friend of the Donegan family from the showing circuit, introduced Donegan to his brother-in-law, Savage, and the connection was made that was to lead to the realisation of an Olympic dream seven years later.
At the time Lehane had a home-bred yearling son of Step Together in his Glanmire yard and, two years later, he sold it to Savage, who in turn passed the horse on to Trish Donegan. "From the day we first sat on him after breaking him we knew he had something special," says Donegan. "He loves to work, he loves to learn, he's a special horse in every way."
Those special qualities took Don't Step Back to 21st place in his first three-star outing at Blenheim just 12 months ago and Donegan then rode the gelding into seventh at Punchestown in May to clinch a place on the Olympic squad. The pair have matured together since those early days, and the process has been fine-tuned over the past few months in the build-up to Sydney.
With help from Tipperary-based former international Van der Vater and Olympic trainer Mary Darcy, Donegan and Don't Step Back produced the performance of a lifetime in Sydney that has allowed both Donegan and the Irish selectors to see the glint of a medal not too far down the road.
"You'd have to say a star was born," Irish chef d'equipe Helen Cantillon-O'Keeffe said this week of the west Cork combination that has made the rest of the international eventing world sit up and take notice. But that sort of attention has a downside too, bringing as it does the kind of open-chequebook offers that any owner, no matter how committed to their rider, would find hard to turn down.
The Irish selectors know that Donegan and Don't Step Back are the answer to their prayers. Now they're praying the pair can stay together and soar to further glories with the Irish tricolour on their saddlecloth.
