EQUESTRIAN SPORT/News: World show-jumping champion Dermott Lennon has been signed up for a five-year sponsorship deal worth well over €2 million, the largest individual sponsorship in the history of the sport.

The 34-year-old Co Down rider, who became Ireland's first world show jumping champion when clinching individual gold in Spain 15 months ago, has agreed a deal worth more than €1.7 million with a member of the Saudi Arabian royal family, His Royal Highness Prince Sultan Bin Fahad Bin Nasser Bin Abdulaziz.

Under an ancillary arrangement that boosts the package to over €2 million, Lennon will also receive backing from the Dutch airline KLM and computer component company Sun Microsystems. Princess Haya of Jordan, who was based in Ireland training with Paul Darragh in Co Meath for some time, has also pledged her support to Lennon.

The package will be launched by the Prince at the Dubai international horse show next month, when Lennon will become the first world champion to compete in the Middle East. He will jump at the Abu Dhabi and Dubai fixtures with the KLM and Sun Microsystems on his saddlecloth.

As well as financial backing for Lennon, the deal also includes the Prince taking on partial ownership of Belfast, a five-year-old Irish-bred show jumper that Lennon views as an Olympic hope for 2008. The package includes support up to and including the 2008 Olympics.

"It's a great combination between the Arab world and Ireland, the land of the horse", the Prince said yesterday, "and I'm looking forward to coming to Ireland and announcing this sponsorship in the New Year."

The Prince is scheduled to travel to Ireland at the end of next month or the beginning of February and the Middle Eastern media is expected to give the story widespread coverage, with Lennon due to feature on the cover of Hello magazine in Dubai next month.

The deal has been brokered by Samir Mirdad, a friend and adviser to the Prince, who has spent some time in Ireland competing on horses owned by both Lennon and the McLoughlin brothers, Jim, Richard and Edwin. Mirdad's father, His Excellency Major General Dr Abdulaziz Mirdad, was the first of Lennon's Middle Eastern contacts to offer him sponsorship.

The contract, which includes an option to extend beyond the agreed five-year term, is a welcome change of luck for Lennon, who has taken a back seat since winning the individual title at the world equestrian games in Jerez, Spain in September last year. His ride at the championships, Liscalgot, has missed most of this season through injury and her future in the sport is far from secure.

"I'm hopeful that she will come back", Lennon said from his Dutch base yesterday. "I couldn't say 100 per cent she wouldn't come back and I couldn't say 100 per cent that she will, but I'd like to give it a go."

The Touchdown mare, which was part of the quartet that won team gold at the 1999 European championships in Arnhem, Holland, injured a ligament in a front leg in May. However, Lennon yesterday refuted rumours Liscalgot has undergone surgery on the leg.

"She was seriously injured, but she has never been operated on," he said. The mare fell at the World Cup show in Gothenburg in March and did not appear in competition again until Balmoral in May. Two days later the mare was lame and has been off the circuit since, spending six weeks with the leg in plaster.

Lennon rode Liscalgot to a masterful clear to clinch team gold at the Europeans four years ago, but the mare was then put on the market by owner/breeders Terence and Mary Harvey. In a successful bid to prevent the horse being sold out of the country, three Northern Irish businessmen put together a syndicate to buy Liscalgot. The Taipan syndicate, made up of Woods Rosbotham, James Acheson and Sam Thompson, negotiated a seven-figure deal and bought the mare in March of last year.

She instantly rewarded the faith of her new owners by securing a notable double at the World Cup show in Dortmund a week later and then gave Irish show jumping its finest hour with the two clear rounds in the final individual qualifier in Jerez that allowed Dermott Lennon to go on to claim the world crown.