This article has appeared previously with Equestrian Life. To read the current issue, please click here
Hazel and WillingaPark Clifford on their lap of honour at Adelaide in 2018.
© Michelle Terlato
Hazel Shannon and WillingaPark Clifford jumped into history in the CCI5* class at the Mitsubishi Motors 2019 Australian International Three Day Event. The combination won the event on a score of 38.7 penalties, and together became the first Australian combination to win the same event three times. (It is also worth mentioning that there are only five combinations in the world who have achieved this!)
As we prepare to watch replays of the 2019 Australian International 3 Day Event live stream this Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we thought we would revisit this article written by Heath Ryan about the unstoppable combination that featured in the January/February 2019 issue of Equestrian Life magazine following their 2018 Aus3DE win. We hope you enjoy!
For further details about the replay of the 2019 AI3DE livestream including the schedule, click here.
By Heath Ryan
In October 2017, Hazel Shannon’s little chestnut thoroughbred horse, Clifford, was about to be put on the market for a considerable amount of money. The owner of Clifford was experiencing financial difficulties as a result of her partner for some 25 years passing away. Hazel and Clifford had been together for four years and had experienced great success, including winning the Adelaide 4* three-day event in 2016.
We had anticipated this looming problem and I personally had approached a group of people with the view to buying Clifford so Hazel could keep the ride and try for Australian representation with Tokyo 2020 in mind. At the last moment my negotiations fell through and Clifford was taken from Hazel to be sold on the open market on the Wednesday before the Goulburn CIC event in October 2017. In desperation, Hazel and I stayed up all that night and drafted out an email to Terry Snow, who neither of us really knew other than he had just conducted the first big dressage competition at his magnificent Willinga Park equestrian facility at Bawley Point on the NSW South Coast.
We finished up at 2am and decided to go to bed for a couple of hours to mull over our email. At 7am we reviewed it and hit the send button. That Thursday morning started like every other here at Ryans, except without doubt everyone was depressed. At 8.30am whilst teaching a lesson, my phone went off, which signalled the start of a normal working day for me teaching and riding and juggling phone calls. I flicked open the screen and pretty well froze. Every sensibility focussed up on the phone call and I remember everything around me fading out of my consciousness. The incoming call was from Terry Snow. I answered and there was no beating around the bush: “Terry Snow here and I understand you have a bit of a situation with this horse Clifford.”
I stammered a bit and said, “Thank you for clearly having looked at my email” and that, yes, I felt Clifford and Hazel were a very exciting young combination on the Australian horizon which I felt Australia was about to lose. Terry basically said “well, we can’t have that” and moved straight into how much he would have to pay and could we get Clifford back in work straight away so that he could honour his entry in the Goulburn Australian One-Day Event Championships in two days’ time.
Time stood still for me for the next half hour and I can still remember those amazing moments thundering through my life on the phone to Terry. It’s history now but Terry went ahead and bought Clifford, who is now called WillingaPark Clifford. Clifford and Hazel performed two days later at Goulburn where Terry turned up to watch his new acquisition, and like a fairy tale, Hazel and WillingaPark Clifford won. There have been some tough times since where the results have not been a fairy tale, but Hazel and Clifford have soldiered on and finished 2018 back in spectacular form, winning the Adelaide 4* three-day event again and becoming the first partnership to win this major international event twice. There have been other riders win the event twice but always on different horses.
I have jumped ahead of myself here a little. Not long after Terry took over ownership of WillingaPark Clifford, he asked me what sort of horses did Hazel have as a back-up. I took a deep breath and explained that horses like this were indeed rare and that the success was not just a good horse or a good rider. Their success happened because there was chemistry between the horse and the rider and basically Clifford would do anything Hazel asked him to do and Hazel would do anything to protect Clifford. This all sounds a little bit Hollywood; however, I certainly have coached at Olympics and been involved with riders winning gold medals and I consider myself a really tough operator. You need to believe me when I say something like this, that the partnership is completely critical for a long-standing and outstanding performance that has the potential to win gold medals. Terry mulled this over and said, “Well, we need to try and have another horse where we can have some chance of developing this partnership a second time with an eye on the future”.
Clifford is a talented cross country horse.
© Michelle Terlato
For me this was a huge change in the relationship with Terry Snow. Initially he was saving an Australian horse from being sold overseas so that it could continue to promote the sport of eventing at the very top here in Australia. Wanting to buy a backup horse meant that Terry was now also promoting Hazel with a view to her ongoing development at the top as an Australian eventer. To my mind, this was subtle but seriously significant.
Hazel started researching all eventing results in Australia from 2* up, looking at horses who were rideable and so had respectable dressage potentials. Horses that performed at regular intervals, which tended to point towards soundness. Horses that had good cross-country results and were capable of being fast when they had to be. And finally, horses that were inclined to post clear show jumping rounds. These considerations reflect where the sport is today and represent mathematical statistics, which are critical ingredients in all of the top horses today the world over.
Although not a natural fit for the dressage arena, Clifford is very well schooled in the discipline.
© Michelle Terlato
In my opinion Clifford is indeed a good horse and so a backup at least needs to be as good as him and, logically thinking, you would try and buy a horse that is potentially better. Certainly, buying a backup horse that is not as good makes no sense at all. The trouble is that there are very few horses here in Australia in this league and even fewer for sale. I know they are out there but recognising them is extremely difficult. Hazel and I studied the results of every 2* and 3* competition for the last 18 months in Australia.
Anyhow, to cut a long story short, we extended our search to include the northern hemisphere where the number of horses at this level immediately jumped one hundred-fold. This in itself was confusing and difficult to work through, however, it soon became apparent that sticking to the original criteria of rideability, regular competition form, having speed and endurance available when needed, and an inclination to be clear in the show jumping, were qualities that few horses were able to meet. Anyhow, in October 2018, Hazel and I flew to England where we met up with Terry and travelled to Ireland, to Germany, to France and back to England. All of this was done in 10 days and sometimes we would drive for 14 hours straight. It was exhausting. However, we did see some beautiful horses. In the northern hemisphere, buying and selling horses is an established industry. It was an eye-opener. The outcome of this tour was the purchase of Cooley SRS (soon to be called WillingaPark Cooley) from Olly Townend, who is currently ranked the No. 1 event rider in the world.
Oliver Townend and Cooley SRS on their way to second place at the 2018 Badminton Horse Trials.
© Kit Houghton/FEI
Cooley SRS came second at Badminton three-day event this year and I hope will team up with Hazel and WillingaPark Clifford in their efforts to make the Australian team for Tokyo 2020. Cooley SRS is definitely not the most brilliant horse we saw, but has been really well schooled. Cooley SRS is good in the dressage arena with serious talent, which has been developed really well by Olly.
WillingaPark Clifford is probably the best schooled dressage eventer in the world, having won Prix St Georges and Inter I dressage competitions, however, he is just super genuine with a great walk but is otherwise just not born to be in a dressage arena. Cooley SRS does have dressage gears. He is brave and honest cross-country as proven by his record, but is probably not going to be as fast or perhaps have as much endurance as Clifford. Olly is a very aggressive and competitive rider. Cooley SRS is a careful show jumper as indeed is Clifford.
So, we have gone for a horse that we know will thrive when the going gets tough, a horse that keeps fronting up to big competitions, which tends to indicate a toughness in the soundness department; a horse that does have some flair in the dressage arena and a horse who does try to leave all of the show jumping rails up on the final day of competition. What we don’t know is whether Cooley SRS and Hazel will develop a great partnership. Certainly, I have seen really good horses with really good riders fail to develop a partnership, and as a consequence the results have been less than exciting. I don’t think there are any guarantees in life and sometimes you just have to have the courage to try. We expect Cooley SRS to arrive in Australia in January and, depending on him recovering and acclimatising, he will appear on the Australian event circuit when he is ready in 2019.
Hazel and Clifford on their way to winning Adelaide 4* for the second time.
© Michelle Terlato
This year is also going to be a monster year for WillingaPark Clifford as we plan to raid the Kentucky 5* three-day event in the USA in April. The plan is to prepare here in Australia and then go in at the last minute and compete and get home as fast as we can. These are the tactics we used when winning Olympic gold medals in the ’90s. The current Australian high performance tactics of taking horses into the northern hemisphere early for acclimatisation have, in my opinion, been disastrous in recent times. So, watching just how these tactics play out will be very interesting, especially with a view to developing a gold medal plan and tactics at Tokyo in 2020.
So, for Hazel Shannon who hails from far north Queensland from a little town called Mutchilba, 2018 has been a life-changing year. It was a year that has seen Terry Snow respond to what I would describe as a critical moment in Australian eventing history. The ramifications of what he has done and is doing is going to unfold for everyone to assess. For me, I think we have the potential to change eventing outcomes for lots of our Australian up-and-coming superstar event riders of the future. However, we do need to win a gold medal at Tokyo and I will be throwing myself at trying to make that happen and so complete a blueprint that is actually very repeatable.
For those of you watching on, 2019 will make for great spectating as a very brave and quiet country girl, Hazel, challenges the world in April in Kentucky and goes forward with her two horses, Cooley SRS and WillingaPark Clifford, on a program heading towards Tokyo 2020.
Cheers,
Heath
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