Blarney Castle's eighth international horse trials get underway this morning, but hopes that local rider Austin O'Connor would be going for a hat-trick in the one-star competition were dashed last Friday with the sale of Tim Holland's horse Lahana Rocket to Germany.

However, O'Connor (24) is to receive a special Irish Horse Board presentation from junior Minister for Agriculture Noel Davern at Blarney Castle tonight.

But even though he is out of the one-star, O'Connor still has hopes of a good placing in the two-star competition, in which he rides the nine-year-old Mystery Man.

The grey thoroughbred is owned by 23-year-old Louise Skelton, who had planned to ride the horse herself until she was badly injured in a car crash seven weeks ago today.

Her left leg has multiple fractures, but the most serious injury is to the tendon in her ankle, which has been completely severed. "If she was a horse she would have been shot," her mother, Jackie, said. But Louise is determined that her replacement jockey will do better than she herself did at Blarney last year.

O'Connor is realistic about his chances of victory on a horse he has only ridden at three competitions, although he brought Sundance Polly into sixth place at Windsor last weekend having only sat on the mare for the first time the previous Saturday.

"The competition's pretty hot here", O'Connor said last night of the biggest ever international field at Blarney, which includes last year's winner and double Olympic champion Mark Todd, who rides the mare Dazzling Light and the New Zealand bred stallion Aberjack in the two-star.