EQUESTRIAN: Hopes of a medal for Ireland's eventers were kept alive at the Markopoulo equestrian centre yesterday with rock-solid dressage performances from our first three riders to put the team in third overnight.

That result is not a true reflection of the placings, however, as several of the stronger nations have still to run their third riders and the order is expected to alter dramatically during today's action.

Susan Shortt kicked off for the Irish with a personal best from the mare Just Beauty Queen for a mark of 58.8 penalties. The 12-year-old has never shone in the dressage, but she put her best hoof forward yesterday. Just one minor error marred the test, when the mare was late behind in the first flying change, but Shortt's supremely accurate riding squeezed every mark possible out of the judges everywhere else.

"I was really pleased with her," Shortt said after her second-into-the-arena ride. "She tried her heart out for me and I didn't get too tense. She was going so well outside that I was actually looking forward to going in."

The 38-year-old revealed she had received some help from an unexpected source in the build-up to the Games. Australian Wayne Roycroft, chairman of the international three-day-event committee and a former Olympian, had offered to ride the mare during Shortt's recent five-week training spell in England and found the key to producing the extended trot her regular jockey had been unable to produce in the past.

The resulting score of 58.8 eventually left Shortt in 18th overnight, one slot behind Niall Griffin, last of the Irish into the arena yesterday, who suffered the worst of the difficult weather that prevailed in the afternoon.

Although the threatened storm failed to materialise, high winds wreaked havoc during several tests. But Griffin's inexperienced nine-year-old Lorgaine maintained his composure for a score of 58.4, much to the delight of Griffin's family, kitted out in Wexford jerseys out ithe grandstand.

"He held his breath and his heart stopped when he first came in, but once I'd done the extended trot he started to relax and let me ride him," Griffin said, "but it was very spooky in there."

The pleasant breeze had strengthened to something more lively shortly before Sasha Harrison was due in, and the normally reliable All Love du Fenaud found the conditions far too electric to concentrate on anything as mundane as dressage.

On his toes throughout, the 16-year-old French-bred never really settled and Harrison - 10th after this phase at the world games in Jerez two years ago - was left pondering what might have been.

"I'm gutted," Harrison admitted, knowing she will be pushed well down the order today from her overnight 12th place. "I'd hoped for an early-40s mark, but he wasn't concentrating on me in there. He was an angel outside, but he just got a bit above himself in the arena."

Equally devastated was Blyth Tait, New Zealand's individual gold medallist in 1996, who had been hoping for another place on the podium before his retirement at the end of the year. But Ready Teddy, the horse Tait steered to success in both Atlanta and at the world games in Rome two years later, found the combination of an enthusiastic crowd and the high winds just too much. A mark of 63.8 left the Kiwi pair in 23rd and well off the pace.

Tait had got off to a similarly bad start at the Barcelona Olympics when Messiah, who had to be reshod only moments before his test, totally refused to co-operate and his score left him almost last. The pair made a brilliant recovery to shoot right up the rankings and eventually claimed team silver and individual bronze.

"But this is no Barcelona," Tait said yesterday, referring to a cross country course many of the riders feel is not tough enough for an Olympic challenge.

With Edmond Gibney and Mark Kyle due into the arena today, the Irish will be hoping to stake a stronger claim on the rankings, but there is a distinctly Irish angle at the top of the individual leaderboard in the shape of the Irish-bred Ringwood Cockatoo.

Germany's Bettina Hoy, always something of a dressage specialist, has a 12-point advantage. New Zealand's Olympic debutante Heelan Tompkins and Glengarrick squeezed into second at the close of play.