Legends of the sport: Irish showjumper Eddie Macken *H&H Plus*

Penny Richardson charts the career of the brilliant Irish showjumper and his partnership with quadruple Hickstead Derby winner Boomerang

Ireland is a country full of equestrian myths and legends and among her modern-day tales is that of a man who in the 1970s bestrode the world of international showjumping like a colossus.

Eddie Macken now lives in Canada, on the other side of the Atlantic from his beginnings in a small town in Co. Longford, but he has never been forgotten in his home country. In 2015, a project by 27 schoolchildren, which included his great niece, called for a statue in his honour to be erected in Granard, the place of his birth.

It wasn’t only in Ireland that this unassuming man was a superstar. In 1982, the BBC made a documentary on his partnership with his great horse Boomerang and two years later, he was the subject of ITV’s This is Your Life.

Surprisingly, Eddie doesn’t come from a family of horsemen and he often insists that much of his success was due to being in the right place at the right time.

You may also be interested in…