Eilish Byrne, originally from Dundalk, has moved to Arklow where she is based with her trainer Niall Quirke to pursue her Olympic Dream of representing Ireland at Para Olympic level.

Born with spina bifida, Eilish has never allowed her disability to stop her from enjoying life to the fullest. Eilish has backpacked through the USA, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa and has bungee jumped and scuba dived in all these countries - she has done cave exploring, and many other activities which many able bodied people would find daunting.

Second of five children, Eilish's family never considered her as "disabled" and she kept up with them all - joining in all the family activities including swimming all day long on summer holidays at Carlingford Lough.

Peadar and Nora Bryne have always been there to support Eilish and have encouraged her to go for her dreams with no fear of limitation and the horses have been no different.

Through her school life Eilish never allowed the unkindness of some children to destroy her love of life and she now says it made her the strong person she is today. Her parents never had any thought of sending her to a school for children with disability as they felt this would limit her life in an integrated society where disability should not exclude people from all activities and work places.

Eilish tells the story of the bungee jump -"I was backpacking in Northern Australia and there were 20 in the group I was traveling with. The bungee jumping company offered a discount for 20 jumpers - the pressure was on! To get the discount I had to make the jump - I was very scared but sort of had to do it - wouldn't have been fair to my traveling pals if I didn't!"

Even though Eilish says she wouldn't be rushing back to bungee jump the big smile after she was done shows that this adrenalin junkie did enjoy the experience!

While backpacking through Australia, Eilish had a ball exploring the underground caves in northern New South Wales.

"I am not sure how they convinced me to try this one. It was a bit scary - the spaces we crawled in were really small and I marked it on my card as a good achievement!"

Eilish holds a BSAC licence for divinig and is an open water diver. Her deepest dive was 37m in El Hierro, which is one of the Canary Islands.

The favourite dive was the Great Barrier Reef in Australia which is considered one of the most beautiful in the world.

Eilish first found horses as a 12 year old girl and was an active showjumping competitor, competing in able-bodied competition as she did not realise at this time in her life that there were other disabled people competing in equestrian sport.

In 2002, at 37 years of age, Eilish decided she wanted to learn about Dressage and joined Para Equestrian Ireland Ltd and it was only then that she discovered there were other riders with disabilities.

Para Equestrian Ireland ltd. is a registered charity whose mission statement is "to develop equestrian sport for people with disabilities and provide training and competition opportunities for riders to ensure personal best performance in dressage"

Eilish was not satisfied with simply riding in Para competition, so she also joined Dressage Ireland to gain experience and she regularly competes in able bodied competition, and has qualified for National Championships in both Northern and Southern Ireland.

Eilish has competed from Preliminary level through to Elementary at this stage......but don't believe for one moment that this is where the journey ends for this determined rider!

Eilish's adventures continue - and her Paralympic dream becomes closer to reality after her win at the Kreuttal, Vienna International 4* event recently where she became the first Irish Para Equestrian to win an International event.

Click here for Eilish's blog telling all about her trip to Vienna with Youri.