Rachel Proudley Shatters a Sixty-One Year Wait in Dublin
Some moments in sport belong not just to the winner, but to everyone who witnesses them. This was one of those moments.
Rachel Proudley and Easy Boy de Laubry Z lit up the RDS arena in Dublin last night with a performance that will be remembered for decades. In front of a packed crowd at the Dublin Horse Show 2025, the pair soared over the towering puissance wall at 2.15 metres to claim the Defender Puissance title. It wasn’t just a win – it was history. Rachel became the first woman in sixty-one years to take the puissance crown in Dublin, and she did it with the kind of composure, precision, and partnership that defines true excellence in our sport.
The puissance is a test that strips everything back to the essentials: trust, bravery, and timing. There are no shortcuts when you are faced with a wall that looks more like a fortress than a fence. The class began with five combinations, each one tackling the imposing red wall at its opening height. As the jumps went up, so did the intensity. Some combinations faltered as the height edged towards the point where only perfection would suffice. Rachel and Easy Boy de Laubry Z met each round head-on, the gelding pricking his ears at the crowd as if the noise only sharpened his focus. Each pass was a statement – clean, bold, confident – until at last the wall reached a breath-taking 2.15 metres. When they approached the final effort, there was a stillness in the air, the sort of silence that belongs only to the moments before history is made. Then they took off – clean, confident, effortless – and the wall was behind them. The eruption from the crowd told you everything you needed to know.
This was not an isolated flash of brilliance. Rachel’s rise has been shaped by years of graft, refining the details others might overlook, building a bond with her horses that allows for these moments to happen. Still in her twenties, she has already carved a name for herself on the British showjumping circuit with big wins in puissance classes at Bolesworth and London, and placings at major internationals. Her riding is marked by quiet determination rather than showmanship for its own sake, a focus on letting her horses shine. Easy Boy de Laubry Z is no ordinary partner either – scope, bravery, and heart in equal measure – and together they are proving what is possible when talent and trust meet.
For Equitas, moments like this are more than sport. They are about representation, about the stories that lift the next generation. Seeing Rachel in that arena, claiming the space with such authority, is a powerful reminder that barriers – whether of height or history – are there to be cleared. It is about the quiet grind as much as the loud celebrations, the unseen mornings in the yard, the patience through setbacks, the belief that the next attempt can and will be the one that flies.
The significance of this victory is not just in the record books. It is in the image of a young woman walking back into the arena to receive her trophy, leading a horse who looks as though he would follow her anywhere. It is in the ripple effect that will reach far beyond Dublin, touching the ambitions of riders watching from home and standing in warm up rings across the world. This was an achievement that belongs to Rachel, to Easy Boy, to her team – but it also belongs to every rider who has ever dared to aim higher than the safe option.
The Puissance wall may have been the physical challenge, but the real feat here was dismantling a sixty-one-year wait in one evening. Rachel Proudley has not only raised the bar – she has reminded us all that when preparation meets courage, there is no wall too high.
