Enniscrone’s Richard is a showjumping star

A young showjumper from Enniscrone is enjoying a brilliant season this year aboard his trusty horse, Chinook.

Richard Howley, 24, is originally from Dooneen in Enniscrone and is now based in Wetherby, close to Leeds in Yorkshire.

Along with his partner, he runs a successful stable, HK Horses, which breeds young horses and also sells them too.

Richard said his love of showjumping came at a young age as he grew up in a family steeped in the industry.

He told the Sligo Champion: “I suppose I was around eight or nine when I started showjumping.

“My parents were always involved and I grew up around horses and ponies. So I was always involved.

“When I started showjumping, we competed in local gymkhanas before moving into jumping.

“My older sister too did showing at a high level, the interest was always there.

“I started doing gymkhanas and competing in small pony classes, trying to get better.”

That he certainly did and a move to the UK aged 17 saw Richard become involved in showjumping full- time.

“I moved over when I was s17 and I’m here since. Along with Morgan Kent, my partner, we run the company HK Horses, she’s my business partner too.”

Richard worked with Michael Whitaker for three years before suffering a horrendous injury which saw him out of action for months.

“Unfortunately I was in an accident and broke my back when I was 20.

“That meant I had to take a lot of time off to carry out a recovery. “There were a lot of sleepness nights and lots of doing nothing. “Thankfully after three and a half months I was mobile again. These are the type of risks that go with the sport,” Richard admitted.

Along with Morgan, he runs HK Horses, which breeds a lot of young horses and they also buy and sell from low level right through.

He said they are trying to touch all of the market, even if a horse isn’t from the high end of the market, once it’s handled well, there is always a market for it.

“It’s about how you handle the horse, as long as you do a nice job, then there should be a market for it,”

Aside from his busy work with the company, Richard finds time to compete.

“This year has been great, a lot of it is down to my horse, Chinook. “He was a 13 month eventer and then made a career change. He’s been going good.

“We were in Spain competing and did very well, won a good bit of money.”

He had an incredible winning streak in Mijas on the Costa de sol tour.

Over the duration of the show he won 10 classes and had many placings.

Richard’s greatest victory was winning the world ranking speed class.

He competed six horses at the show and had to settle for runner up slot in the € 24000 grand prix on the final day where he lost out to Pius Schwizer by 0.07 of a second.

He has big plans for the company and during the upcoming break from competing is going to concentrate on the young horses in the stable.

“Hopefully next year then I will go onto bigger grand prix, and improve my world ranking, at the moment I think I’m in the top 200. Hopefully the points will be higher at the end of the month after Spain,” he added.

There is a lot of travel involved and Richard explained he tries to keep as much balance as possible with the time he spends working for the company. “It’s going well and because of my responsibilities with the company, I have to divide my time as best as I possibly can. I haven’t been over competing in the States much, it’s hard travelwise but maybe in the future it will happen,” he added. PEOPLE are being asked to help out fielding a team for wheelchair basketball. The local wheelchair basketball group have a coach but just four players. In order to continue, they need people to jump into chairs to make up teams. Training takes place on Tuesdays from 7- 8pm at IT Sligo, contact Shane Hayes Sligo Sport and Recreation Partnership if you’d like to try it out. You don’t need to be a wheelchair user to take part. To contact Shane, he’s available by email on shane@ sligosportandrecreation. ie or phone him on 071- 9161511.