-- Text by Paul Nolan
Katie Reilly was announced as the winner of the 2025 The Irish Field Dressage Rider of the Year award at the The Irish Horse World Awards lunch in the Palmer North Golf Club in Co Kildare, Ireland 9 December 2025.
This is the third year in a row that a para dressage rider wins the Irish Field Dressage Rider of the Year title.
Katie and Natasha Baker's former Paralympic medal-winning 14-year-old Hanoverian mare Keystone Dawn Chorus made their international debut as a combination at Doha CHI, Qatar in February. The British-based Ticknevin, County Kildare native scored five international wins this year at the CPEDI3* shows in Wellington Heckfield and Hartpury in Great Britain including an international personal best score of 75.194% in the Para Grand Prix Freestyle III at Hartpury in July.
Remarkably, at the age of just 17 Katie represented Ireland at her second consecutive European Para Dressage Championships in Ermelo, The Netherlands in September where she scored 72.167% for an impressive sixth place in the Grade III Para Grand Prix A which secured her qualification for the Para Grand Prix Freestyle Individual Grade III Final. She was a member of the Irish team that finished a respectable eighth of the twelve teams competing on 202.417%.
Katie was the highest ranked Irish athlete at 19th in the overall FEI Para Dressage World Individual Rankings, ranking 3rd in the Grade III World Rankings and number one in the World Individual U18 Ranking.
Katie commented, “twelve months ago I didn’t expect to be here receiving this award. It has been an amazing season with Keystone Dawn Chorus (Lottie). Many thanks to my family and my trainer John Norcross for their tremendous support. Lottie is so powerful which is why my Lady Gaga-themed freestyle to music programme is a real highlight for me. I have always had a plan to try and go as far as I can and I will continue with that in 2026.”
Previous winners of The Irish Field Dressage Rider of the Year Award (first awarded in 1997) are as follows:
1997 - Yvette Truesdale, 1998 - Heike Holstein (1), 1999 - Katy Price, 2000 - Anna Merveldt (1), 2001 - Anna Merveldt (2), 2002 - Anna Merveldt (3), 2003 - Heike Holstein (2), 2004 - Anna Merveldt (4), 2005 - Heike Holstein (3), 2006 - Anna Merveldt (5), 2007 - Heike Holstein (4), 2008 - Judy Reynolds (1), 2009 - Anna Merveldt (6), 2010 - Anna Medveldt (7), 2011 - Anna Merveldt (8), 2012 - Helen Kearney, 2013 - Roland Tong, 2014 - Judy Reynolds (2), 2015 - Judy Reynolds (3), 2016 - Judy Reynolds (4), 2017 - Judy Reynolds (5), 2018 - Judy Reynolds (6), 2019 - Judy Reynolds (7), 2020 - Kate Dwyer, 2021 - Heike Holstein (5), 2022 - Abi Lyle, 2023 - Michael Murphy, 2024 - Sarah Slattery and 2025 – Katie Reilly.
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