Billy Ringrose
Renowned international show jumper who led the way for Ireland’s success in the sport, writes Michael HB Hayes
COLONEL William (Billy) A Ringrose, who died on April 29, six weeks short of his 90th birthday, shone as a show jumper both at home and in the international arena.
For the past 15 to 20 years, six former schoolmates lunched with Billy in the RDS three or four times each year — he had been president of the RDS — and we have a special appreciation of the man and his achievements.
The seven, members of the Synge Street Leaving Cert class of 1947, were contemporaries of Richie Ryan, minister of finance in the early 1970s, a couple of years ahead of Gay Byrne, and about three behind Eamonn Andrews.
We never discussed show jumping at our meetings in the RDS. Instead, we frequently reflected on the excellent teaching and motivational qualities of the Christian Brothers and how we were influenced by them in the classroom and through activities including debate, drama, and sport.
We had a special appreciation of lay teacher Tommy O’Rourke, who brought poetry alive through his dramatic renditions from Yeats, Tennyson, Shelley and Wordsworth, and he displayed memorable thespian qualities in his renditions of Shakespeare. Each year Tommy expected his pupils to achieve first place in Ireland in Leaving Cert English, and they often did.
After World War II, interest in Irish show jumping and hunting horses rose with the performances by Billy, in particular, on the North American autumn equitation circuit. It was important to be able to show we still had outstanding horses and riders of the calibre of the great Dan Corry, Fred Aherne and other excellent Army riders who dominated the sport in the 1930s.
In the mid-1950s, when a research student at Cornell, I went to Madison Square Garden to watch Billy compete. The house was full, the atmosphere was electric, and Billy won magnificently on Ballynonty.
His son Fergal’s memoir of his father quotes from an article by Michael O’Hehir for the Irish Independent on December 8, 1960. It recalled what I had witnessed a few years earlier and went on to describe how Captain Ringrose on Cloyne had won the 1960 Grand Prix in Madison Square Garden, where “the ringside boxes were fully occupied by the ladies and gentlemen of the elite”.
In his description of the jumping event, O’Hehir wrote that as the competition progressed “it seemed all Madison Square Garden was riding and urging Cloyne... and with a roar of encouragement that defies description, the spectators fairly got behind the horse as he jumped to victory. Everything but the roof seemed to go up in the tumult and shouting that followed”.
The 1960s were outstanding for Billy. He took part in his second Olympics in Rome in 1960, and had begun his association with Loch an Easbaig in mid-1959. It was not until 1961 that the association began to prosper, and between then and 1967 Billy and his horse were world-class.
The Army team was invariably given media attention in North America, and Fergal cites an article in the Toronto Daily Star in November 1961 by Milt Dunnell, then Canada’s most revered sportswriter, inspired by Billy’s win on Loch an Easbaig in the Toronto Royal Winter Fair.
Dunnell referred to Billy’s efforts earlier that year in the “mink and diamond circuit, from Marseille and Nice in April, to Rome, London, Dublin, Washington, Harrisburg, New York and finally Toronto”.
He was aware of Billy’s victories in the Grand Prix de Monaco in Nice, where the trophy was presented by Princess Grace, and in the prestigious Grand Prix di Roma in May where the trophy was presented by Queen Elizabeth, who was on a state visit to Italy.
Remarkably, Billy also took second place, riding Cloyne. The two previous Olympic champions, Raimondo d’Inzeo and Hans-Gunter Winkler, were in the minor placings.
Dunnell concluded: “He’s first of all an officer in the Irish Army and collects no extra rewards for jockeying horses over the sticks. He’s 31 now, a handsome, serious, well-spoken specialist who takes a serious look at the glamorous world in which he rotates. ‘Horses are vital to the economy of Ireland,’ he explains. ‘That’s the reason the jumping team exists. It is intended that we draw attention to the horses’.”
Several outstanding equestrian athletes and horses began to emerge in Ireland in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The Show Jumping Association of Ireland decided to merge Army and civilian resources in 1963, heralding resounding successes with Aga Khan Cup wins in 1963, the first since 1959, and again in 1967, Billy making major contributions.
In 1970, he was chosen as commanding officer of the Equitation School and promoted to lieutenant colonel. He was also appointed chef d’equipe for international competitions.
He continued to compete and in 1971 led the Army team to win the Military Nations Cup at Fontainebleu and, in the same year, as chef d’equipe led a team including Captain Ned Campion, Captain Larry Kiely, and a young Eddie Macken riding his famed horse Boomerang to win the Nations Cup at Ostend. It was bitter-sweet for Billy to win in the arena where he had lost his great Loch an Easbaig four years earlier.
Billy retired from the army in 1989 with the rank of colonel, having put in place a system whereby we can now attend the Dublin Horse Show with realistic expectations of seeing outstanding team and individual performances by our show jumpers and to expect our three-day eventers to be among the top performers.
Billy was predeceased by a little over a year by his beloved wife for 63 years, Joan (nee O’Malley from Galway), and by two sons, John and Paul.
He is survived by his youngest son, Fergal, brother Des — an excellent Army horseman who competed with Billy in the 1957 Aga Khan Cup and won the General Guisan trophy as the leading army rider at the Lucerne show in 1957 — and by his sisters Clare (McGlynn) and Dolores (McMahon). He was the great uncle of Irish rugby centre Garry Ringrose.