THE afternoon sun shines high in the sky, beating down on bare-chested workmen who rest on shovels and watch mechanised diggers blast their way through earth and concrete.

They are laying the foundations for Alemannia Aachen's new stadium which will take little more than a year to complete and, even though it will be a gleaming new structure with room for 32,000 paying customers, there is little chance it will blind them to their status. In Aachen, the sporting gods conduct their business in the manor next door.

Next door is the Aachen-Laurensberger Rennverein, a shrine to showjumping in a country where horsemen can rival footballers for wealth and prestige. A fleet of Mercedes sit parked by the entrance to the stables. Their drivers pass the time sharing cigarettes and talking into their mobile phones. Then a young Arab girl leaves the arena, skips into the back of a black Sedan and, suddenly, they are a flurry of activity, roaring off towards the autobahn, leaving a long plume of dust in their wake.

Denis Lynch exits a short time later, stealing a glance at the arena to his right as he points his jeep towards the road. Three weeks ago they held the CHIO here, one of the most prestigious shows on the international circuit. You should have been there, he says. They staged the Nations Cup late on a balmy Thursday evening under floodlights, 50,000 spectators creating a wall of sound as the electricity and adrenaline surged through his veins. He'd never known a night like it.

He lives over 200 kilometres to the north and makes the long journey every day so he can sit on his Olympic horse which stays in quarantine here before making the long haul to Hong Kong next week. As he drives, he fields calls on his phone, switching effortlessly between languages, and when he isn't talking or doing business, there is time to think about where he has come from and the long, twisty road he has travelled.

This time last year he thought about attending international shows and trying to be competitive; that was the summit of his ambition. Now he is going to the Olympics as Ireland's most realistic chance of a gold medal and it still feels like a crazy dream. "I actually dread to think back sometimes," he says laughing. "How I even got here."

He can tell you all the constituent parts, just not exactly how they fell into place He worked hard. He did more right things than wrong. On the occasions that mattered, he was in the right place at the right time. And then, of course, there was that happy mistress, Lady Luck. A guy once said to him that if you were on the wrong side of the bar you could wait hours to get a pint. When the good stuff was flowing, you had to make sure you were on the right side of the bar.

Two years ago he didn't think much about luck. Twelve years had passed since Peter Weinberg, an Aachen-based rider, had seen him hack around in a yard near London and offered him a job. Lynch didn't need to think twice. He knew his showjumping history.

Germany was where Eddie Macken had gone all those years before. Germany was the Schockemoehles and the Beerbaums. It was virtually anyone who was anybody in showjumping. At home you could scratch around and earn a living. In Germany you could make it.

It was a hard dream to follow. One of his grandfathers had dabbled in horses but there was no other trace in his bloodline. In Kilfeacle, he'd grown up surrounded by fields and stables that housed horses. Sometimes when nobody was looking they'd steal into the paddocks and ride bareback and soon there was little else in his world. He quit school as early as he could, hunted and rode in point-to-points.

"I wanted to be a steeplechase jockey but it was the usual story. Suffered a couple of bad falls. Got big and heavy. I mean no way was this a planned career. I'm a very ordinary fella and I couldn't have started off thinking this way. I had fantastic parents and they were very good to me. But they could never have gone out and bought me a fancy horse or a couple of gymkhana ponies or anything like that."

He thinks he was lucky with the people he met. At Weinberg's he met his future wife, Simona, and it was she who pushed him forward, told him to chase his dream. "She more or less said we'll set up on our own and go from there. Her parents were there to support us but I'd have found a way anyway. Robbed a bank if I had to. I'd have done something."

Along the way he met Thomas Straumann, a Swiss multi-millionaire from a family who'd made their fortune in the dental implant business. He told Straumann his story, how he'd arrived in Munster in northern Germany where he bought young horses and, if they were good enough, sold them on for a profit. He was good at it and the years made him better, but selling his best horses left him short as a rider. In the saddle he was going nowhere fast.

"I'd made the decision I wasn't going to ride international shows anymore. I'd no fucking horses, none good enough anyway. I was just going to do young ones and sell them. That's when Thomas came into it. He sat me down and said that's not a very good idea. He said, 'look you can train my daughter how to ride and I'll see if I can get you a few horses. Work your way up'. And that's what I did."

With Straumann's backing, he bought decent horses, good enough to compete at the top shows. But Straumann wanted more. Lynch remembers a conversation they had at the start of last summer. Wouldn't it be nice, Straumann told him, if they could find a horse good enough to go to the Olympics? Lynch smiled nervously. "It was far-off thinking, really far-off. But it's 13 or 14 months on and now we have one. It's unbelievable."

He knew about Lantinus, of course. Everyone in showjumping knew about the nine-year-old Hannoverian bay gelding by Landkoenig. Five years earlier, he'd been sold for a record price at the Hannoverian Elite Sales. Three years later he was sold again for just short of €500,000. And for all the money he commanded, Lantinus proved to be a bargain every time he was moved on.

In 2006, he'd fallen into the hands of an ambitious Ukranian businessman, Alexander Onischenko. Onischenko gave the horse to one of his riders, Gregory Wathelet, and last year the partnership surged to three major Grand Prix victories in rapid succession. Lantinus was clearly a star in the making. Then towards the end of the year Lynch heard the gelding was for sale. He had to check him out.

"He was based at Paul Schockemoehle's yard and I went down and tried him. I did 20 or 30 jumps, hopped off and said 'right, we'll have the horse'. That was it. I more or less begged Thomas for the money. Buy this horse I said. This could be the one. How good I couldn't really say. I can't see into his head. He won a lot as a nine-year-old, did fantastic things. But you never know it's going to click like it's clicked."

For €1.5m it was a risk they were willing to take. In September, Wathelet had brought Lantinus to the European Championships in Mannheim and finished a hugely disappointing 40th. Suddenly there were question marks hanging over him. Had the horse reached his peak? Were his best performances behind him? It was Lynch's task to find the right answers to those questions. "Sure there were worries," he admits. "He'd been on the market for a while and Ludgar Beerbaum and a few other riders had tried him before me. I mean people were saying he's this and he's that and he was either going to go one way or the other way. All my time and energy went into him. It was a lot of hard work but it paid off. I don't know, maybe when you're stuck for something, when you really need it to happen, that's when you pull things off."

In the beginning, he proceeded tenderly and gradually his worries subsided. At home, Lantinus was so gentle his four-year-old daughter could sit on him unperturbed; at work, he was a different animal entirely. Lynch could feel the raw power and the drive, the instant change in attitude once they entered the ring. "It's like the bell goes and click, he's in the zone. That's what makes him special."

At the beginning of the year they claimed two Grand Prix victories on the indoor circuit, but that was just a taster for the outdoor season. In April, they went to Doha for the first leg of the Global Champions Tour, a mega-rich competition for the sport's elite riders, and recorded a stunning success. Grand Prix victories in La Baule, Rome and Hamburg followed. Not since the days of Macken and Boomerang had an Irish rider scooped so many major prizes.

Since the start of the year Lantinus has won him five cars as well as €350,000 in prize money. More than that, he has emerged from virtual obscurity to a place among the top 30 riders in the world while Lantinus is currently the highest-rated horse in the World Breeding Federation rankings. There is simply no hotter riding combination on the planet.

So hot that after Doha a Sheikh with bottomless wealth offered them a mind-boggling €5.5m. To Lynch's relief, Straumann declined. Nothing better reflected his changed fortunes. He was more a buyer than a seller now. Recently they bought another horse, a young rival they will face in Hong Kong, and when Lantinus needs to rest, he thinks his new acquisition will be a worthy substitute. And that's how he needs to think, beyond the Olympics, to the next challenge.

Right now the next challenge is Dublin and his first experience of riding in the Aga Khan Cup. He doesn't get home much and it excites him. He loves riding for his country and if his emergence as a top rider has done anything, it has altered considerably the dynamics of the Irish team. That, he thinks, can only be a good thing.

When he first came into the Irish set-up in 2006, he detected a harsh, venomous atmosphere that shocked and appalled him. That Jessica Kuerten and Cian O'Connor were sworn enemies had long been an open secret even before their feud entered the public domain, but now Kuerten was involved in an unseemly squabble with her team manager, Robert Splaine. Lynch watched from the sidelines, perplexed and angry.

For his part, Lynch isn't friends with any of them. He admits to having a troubled relationship with Splaine and felt his Olympic selection, after Kuerten declined the place she herself had earned, had been needlessly drawn out.

Yet he wonders why the team should have to suffer for it. Years ago Macken and Paul Darragh didn't speak to each other for years, yet busted a gut whenever they jumped together for Ireland. The current generation, he thinks, need to remember that.

He tries to avoid the politics but, of course, it sucks him in. Kuerten and O'Connor will ride together in Dublin for the first time since Rome in May and, given Ireland's precarious position towards the foot of the Samsung Super League table, there is much riding on the outcome. In Rome, they finished fourth out of the eight teams, far from their worst result of the season, but the atmosphere still didn't feel right. It wasn't conducive to the team producing the best result it could.

For all his criticism, Lynch knows there are issues and that Splaine's job is a horribly tough one. For competing in Nations Cups this year, he thinks he has won in the region of €10,000, a pittance set against his earnings on the Grand Prix circuit. There is little financial incentive to keep your best horse for Nations Cups. Patriotism in showjumping can be a costly enterprise.

They need to find ways to address it. A while back an Irish bank came to him offering sponsorship and now he's trying to negotiate a deal with them for the entire Irish team. If it comes off, he hopes it will make it less tempting for riders to withhold their best horses from Nations Cup selection, but it is just a work in progress. For now he just keeps on keeping on, hoping, like the others, that the old enmities don't show their heads and the week passes off peacefully.

"I know there's people who'll say 'oh that Lynch, isn't he a funny character'. But I'm not there trying to say to anybody 'use him or use her' or 'she's this or he's that'. I couldn't give a shit really. As long as they put the jersey on that day and go out and do their bit I couldn't care less. That's my attitude. And Eddie Macken's a bit the same. Eddie and me had a serious chat in Hickstead. This is what we're doing. This is our plan. That's the way it has to be."

He sees Macken back in the team now, 58-years-young and 28 Aga Khan Cups behind him. Why, he wonders, would the veteran want to put himself back through all this hardship? He senses there are those within the Irish camp less than thrilled with Macken's return to the fold and it saddens him to think there would be those unable to locate inspiration in the story.

So be it, he thinks. He has his own patch to mind and happy thoughts to think. In Dublin, he'll ride his second horse, Nabob's Son. There were those who doubted whether the horse would be good enough to compete at Nations Cup level but the summer has brought progress and, he thinks, confirmation that he is worthy of his place. It's important that people know he isn't just a one-horse rider.

After Dublin, he'll head straight for Hong Kong and Lantinus. He expects to find the horse in fine fettle. At the Chio they could only manage 15th, but Aachen came towards the end of a hectic schedule and Lantinus was overdue a long rest. By the time they step into the Olympic arena on August 15, he'll have had six weeks, more than enough time, Lynch expects, to do himself justice.

Although his status as the No 1-ranked horse in the world entitles them to be favourites, Lynch will not be drawn into making bold predictions. The Olympics is the most demanding test of horse and rider and, against the best in the world, all primed for the day, he knows it would be foolish to expect too much. Not from where he has come from anyway and the long, winding road he has travelled.

"All I really want," he says, "is a guy at home drinking his pint in the pub, he's got to know me. He's the most important fella. The guy who doesn't support showjumping. So when he checks the Olympics he might look up my name and say, 'right, when's this guy jumping? I'll watch this mug. See if he's any good.' That's the guy I want to get to."

The ordinary guy in the pub, the guy he used to be himself. Before he embarked on this extraordinary Olympic journey. Before Lantinus.