Nicola Cassidy competed in the team three-day eventing at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games aboard Mr Mullins, finishing 5th as part of the Irish team alongside Patricia Donegan, Sue Shortt and Virginia McGrath – Ireland’s best Olympic eventing team result in decades, and an Olympic debut that had been 44 years in the making.

Born in south Co. Dublin, Cassidy began riding aged three under the encouragement of her mother Sheelagh, herself a former event rider and international dressage judge. She won a bronze medal as part of Ireland’s Junior European Three-Day Event team in 1973 and was reserve for the senior Europeans at Burghley the following year. She opened her own riding school at Donacomper, just outside Celbridge, Co. Kildare in 1977, trained the Indonesian team to South East Asian Games silver in 1983, and spent a year breaking polo ponies in Australia and New Zealand.

She was shortlisted for Atlanta 1996 but narrowly missed selection. The horse that finally took her to Sydney was Mr Mullins, an 11-year-old bay gelding whose owner Conor Crowley – treasurer of the international equestrian federation and Cassidy’s close friend – died the day after their senior team debut at the 1999 European Championships in Luhmuhlen. Crowley’s widow Pat kept the horse in Cassidy’s care and gave her the Olympic chance her career deserved. At Sydney, two cross-country runouts made Cassidy’s score the team’s discard result; Ireland climbed to 5th when New Zealand were eliminated at the final horse inspection.