The sweet smell of horse manure wafted across Dublin 4 yesterday, as it has done every August since 1881. But after a torrid 12 months for Irish showjumping, there were a few less pleasant odours around Merrion Road too.
Even experienced equestrian people must have been tempted to hold their noses at times.
The Lord Mayor of Dublin, Catherine Byrne, conquered a life-long phobia to open the show in traditional style. Thanks to a childhood incident involving a rag-and-bone cart and a bolting horse, her journey from the Mansion House by coach-and-four was the equivalent of a nervous flyer being forced to tour Dublin in a vintage plane. It was a smooth ride, happily.
But facing into another horse show so soon after last year's runaway Olympic drugs scandal, the public could empathise with her trauma.
Family entertainment at the RDS included a Punch and Judy show on the band lawn. Unfortunately, any prospect of a Cian and Jessica (Kürten) show had receded due to the latter's stance on not sharing a team with the former, as the Athens debacle continues to reverberate. In her absence, Cian O'Connor returned to success of a sort at the Dublin Show, finishing fourth in the Speed Stakes international to earn €1,000 and polite applause.
Another of last year's Aga Khan Cup heroes, Billy Twomey, went close in the other big competition, the Irish Sports Council Classic. He was fastest in the jump-off, but on a breezy afternoon, when stewards had to hold the top plank of the planks-jump, he knocked a single fence and finished down the field. The result was in keeping with a subdued opening day. Not even the sunshine could dispel the sense of a collective hangover in equestrian circles.
Outside the main arena it was business as usual, with the odd innovation. The Dublin Horse Show has always been a notoriously class-conscious event. But in a breakthrough for democracy yesterday, classes 7, 33 and 54 - for non-thoroughbred light-weight mares, two-year-old geldings, and medium-weight hunters aged five and over, respectively - were thrown open to the public. Would-be judges were invited to match their skills against the real adjudicators for €1,000. The winner was Henry Fulney, Ballycanew, Co Wexford, who, having bred a supreme champion a few years ago, clearly knew what he was doing.
As usual, the horse show is a backdrop to a trade fair and antiques exhibition.
You can book a holiday in Botswana, buy a Georgian chaise-longue and sponsor an inmate at the Irish Donkey Sanctuary without going very far in the RDS halls. There are umpteen product demonstrations, too.
And, poignantly, these included one for restoring lustre to precious metals, including gold.
"Watch your tarnish vanish in seconds," the billboard boasted.
