TIPPING POINT: Times have moved on since showjumping was part of our sporting consciousness and it's chances of getting back there are fading fast

EMBARRASSMENT AVERTED: a 2012 sports calendar which this space consults every so often said the Hickstead showjumping derby was on this week. It seemed timely, a convenient segue into the real showjumping story that continues to rumble in the murky jungle of gee-gee medication and Olympic disqualification.

Except the Derby took place earlier this month. Margie McLoone, this paper’s equestrian expert wrote that Paul Beecher from Waterford won it, on a home-bred horse, and became the first ever to win it going first. Margie also wrote that few people outside of the horsey-set were aware of this. To which one can only say, no-shit Sherlock – and thanks Margie.

But it has come to this. There was a time when the Hickstead Derby felt like a big deal, a bit like showjumping as a whole in fact, something that didn’t just slip past everyone.

Hickstead’s signature was a large bank, which the horses clambered up on, before stopping and peering down the other side. Since the gradient was damn near sheer, there was usually quite a lot of equine dithering, along the lines of “is the monkey on my back bleedin’ serious”, before a sharp skid downwards where a large fence had to be covered in a single bound.

There were other landmarks too, like the Devil’s Dyke and The Cornishman, which was a wall with a pole running along the top. Actually that doesn’t sound too sexy now. Maybe when the youthful mind is confined to a handful of channels, the televisual pole isn’t set very high. But showjumping always made an impression, even on those of us who cared little or nothing about it.

Eddie Macken won the Derby four years running on Boomerang. Sorry, Carrolls Boomerang. Those were also the day when horses could be named after fags: and anything else for that matter. There was even a beast called Sanyo Music Centre, ridden by Harvey Smith, a name everyone, but everyone, knew was slang for giving someone the V fingers.

Another horse called Pele got turned into butter, aka Kerrygold, around then. And the Aga Khan Cup at the RDS mattered, to the extent that figures like Paul Darragh and Heather Honey became household names. They had profile.

Macken was a Cool Hand Luke figure, an obvious stylist even to those of us whose horsey knowledge extended no further than betting each-way at Kempton. Captain Con Power looked like a long, thin whip on Rockbarton. The stockier Captain Gerry Mullins rode Rockbarton too, and managed to look like a uniformed Weetabix.

But telly got fancier and decided it didn’t need hours of skittish nags and often even skitter riders to fill valuable air time. No doubt showjumping is available to view now, but way further down the dial, on Euro-Gotta-Have-Something-Besides-Ads-Flogging-Kitchen Knives + 1. Gone are the days when showjumping had relevance to the general public; now it’s just a punch-line.

Tommy Tiernan jokes about the Olympic winner Waterford Crystal taking drugs so he can enjoy a life of luxury at stud – “Back her into me, PJ!” It’s a good gag — it even made Letterman — certainly good enough to ignore the reality of Waterford Crystal waving goodbye to his stallion equipment long before Athens. Such detail is irrelevant to the broad cartoon.

There may be any number of detailed reasons why Irish showjumping continues to shoot itself in the hoof, and any amount of logical justifications for why a pursuit so laden with tradition in this country should continue to be relevant. But the problem is the big picture continues to look shambolic, and more than a bit squalid.

The furore around Waterford Crystal and Cian O’Connor and handing back the gold medal eight years ago was bad enough, even without all that whodunit stuff about lab break-ins and vanishing wee samples.

Denis Lynch then went and got disqualified from Beijing when Lantinus tested positive for a banned substance. And now the same horse is found to have recently had hypersensitivity in his legs, a discovery that results in Lynch getting the boot from the Irish team to the London Olympics, to be replaced by – O’Connor.

No doubt such a hopelessly general and impressionistic viewpoint will be criticised for its ignorance of nuance, which is a perfectly valid criticism. No one unaware of when the Hickstead Derby is run off is ever going to be accused of expertise.

Less valid though is any suggestion of victimisation in all of this, some anti-green agenda.

Showjumping’s problems run a lot deeper than that.

Don’t forget there were three other riders banned from the Olympic final in Beijing besides Lynch. The superstar American mare Sapphire was disqualified from last year’s World Cup finals. Rodrigo Pessoa, the Brazilian rider who picked up the gold following O’Connor’s Athens disqualification, was himself told to go home from the 2008 Olympics after his horse tested positive.

And there’s always an excuse, usually plausible too, since there really is always the chance of a horse literally licking something it shouldn’t, for instance from a feed-pot.

So this certainly isn’t just an Irish thing. The equestrian authorities don’t have it in for little old Ireland, or little old Cian, or little old Denis. It just resonates a little more here because Ireland has such a shallow pool of realistic medal chances, and horses are what we’re supposed to do well. They bring a certain reflected pride, even if you care nothing about them, a bit like hurling in Kerry.

Lantinus was found to have hyper-sensitivity in his legs. That can come about through any number of reasons, like insect bites or simply rapping a joint. And it’s important to stress Lynch has been cleared of any suggestion of wrong-doing.

But why the FEI are so hot on this topic is that horses with hyper-sensitive legs not unnaturally tend to avoid hitting things in order to avoid pain. The co-relation between that and jumping poles is obvious to anyone, as is the knowledge that some unscrupulous horsey types have always tried to encourage clear rounds by associating pain in the equine mind with hitting fences.

This can be done through the application of certain medicines, or cruder methods, such as putting sharp objects inside tendon-protecting boots which will hurt the animal if hitting a pole, or simply hitting it with a stick, or even putting an electric wire on the top of an obstacle.

Since it is all but impossible to know definitively if sensitivity in a horse’s leg is there naturally or not, there are inevitably large areas of grey. Even the modern use of thermography, a process that provides a coloured pictorial representation of heat in the body, can’t decide on intent. So the authorities have decided to err on the side of horse welfare: which is as it should be.

Despite the obvious deduction that that is in the long-term interest of everyone involved in the sport, the suspicion that not everyone in showjumping is willing to sing off the same welfare hymn-sheet will persist.

And if that continues there will be a lot more at stake than just embarrassment. Because no one will care at all.