Kilkenny’s Ger O’Neill is a world champion for the third time.
A brilliant performance from Bennettsbridge native O’Neill and the Irish sport horse BP Goodfellas, bred by Kevin Babington and Greg Broderick’s Ballypatrick Stables, saw them crowned World Champions in the 5-year-old final at the FEI WBFSH Jumping World Breeding Championship for Young Horses.
The result completed an incredible hat-trick of world championship wins for O’Neill, who won the six-year-old world title with the Irish sport horse Killossery Kaiden in 2016, and was world champion again in 2017 with the Irish sport horse Columbcille Gipsy.
Having come through two intense qualifying rounds earlier this week that attracted over 240 starters, the top 47 combinations took their place in the final to see who would be crowned World Champions. Eighteen horses and riders jumped clear in the first round to make it into the jump-off, with two of those for Ireland. Third-last to go against the clock, Ger O’Neill and BP Goodfellas (ISH) stormed into the lead with a stunning clear round in 40.12 seconds – a time that would prove unbeatable.
“I’ve won it twice before. I’m the first Irish rider to win it three times, so I had an idea what was coming. But when it’s the final and it’s so competitive, you never think you’re really going to do it again and I’m delighted that it just all came across the line”, O’Neill told KCLR on Tuesday.
“Normally with a showjumper, it’s a combination that you would be together [with the horse] for six months or a year before you go to a class like that. But a good friend of mine, Greg Broderick, from Tipperary, who’s an Olympian, he had four horses at a class in Barna down in Wexford a couple of weeks ago, and his rider could only ride three. So he asked me to ride BP Goodfellas.”
“I had the first fence down, but the horse jumped very well and he asked me what did I want to bring into Lanaken. So we’re only actually together for four weeks. It was my second competition with him, so I think the stars all just aligned.”
“Normally, I shouldn’t be riding the horse or it would have been from Greg’s yard. We’re best friends for 20 years and I just got to do it, so everything just fell our way that we got to win the final on Sunday.”
“He’s by probably the best stallion in the world who’s called Ceccato Gold, and I was just lucky to be his partner. We gelled fairly quickly together and it all just came off, so it was sort of fairy tale stuff just the way everything came.”
