SVG Europe Editor publishes book on Irish sporting legend Billy Ringrose

Fergal Ringrose, Executive Editor of Sports Video Group, has written and published a book entitled ‘Billy Ringrose – A memoir of my Father’ chronicling the career of one of the most famous international sporting stars from the Republic of Ireland. The 280-page book with 80 images takes the reader back in time to Colonel Ringrose’s days as an Army show jumper in the Fifties and Sixties and Chef d’Equipe for Ireland in the Eighties and Nineties.

May 3 1961: Queen Elizabeth II presents the Romulus & Remus trophy to Captain Billy Ringrose on winning the Grand Prix at the Piazza di Siena, Rome with Loch an Easpaig. Ringrose also came second on his back-up horse, Cloyne.

Within the space of one month in 1961 Billy Ringrose won the Grand Prix in Nice, presented by Princess Grace, and then the Grand Prix in Rome, presented by Queen Elizabeth II who was at the time on a State visit to Italy. In his riding career Ringrose won six individual international show jumping Grand Prix and seven Nations Cup team events –- including being part of the first mixed Army-civilian Irish team to win the Aga Khan Cup in 1963 along with Diana Conolly-Carew, Seamus Hayes and Tommy Wade.

Later Ringrose became CO of the Army Equitation School and Chef d’Equipe of the Irish team. He was Chef when the great team of Paul Darragh, James Kernan, Eddie Macken and Captain Con Power won their famous three-in-a-row Aga Khan Cup victory in 1979.

Ringrose’s Dublin Nations Cup successes came on the very same RDS turf that his grand nephew Garry Ringrose has now become a major rugby star with Leinster and Ireland. The book is self-published by the author so not available in bookshops: copies are available online at www.billyringrose.ie.

Billy Ringrose is the only person to have won the Aga Khan Cup as a rider, then as Chef d’Equipe of the Irish team, later presenting the trophy to the winning Irish team Chef d’Equipe in his role as President of the RDS. He is also the only rider to have won the Grand Prix event at all four shows on the American tour the Irish team undertook each Autumn in the Fifties and Sixties; Washington DC, Harrisburg Pennsylvania, Madison Square Garden in New York and the Toronto Winter Fair.

Billy and Fergal Ringrose, March 2017

Over the course of over a year Fergal Ringrose sat down with his parents and recorded a series of conversations about his father’s career. He also spoke to other equestrians – Ned Campion, Dermot Forde, Sneezy Foster, John Ledingham, Brian MacSweeney and Des Ringrose – to help complete the story of one of the greats of Irish show jumping: his father, Colonel Billy Ringrose.

For further information visit www.billyringrose.ie