Shane Rose gives the credit to the horses that were his teachers, including his front-liner, Virgil…

An interview with Chris Hector

That great horseman and educator, Alois Podhajsky coined the phrase, but it is true of every horseman, the horses they ride, make them. Shane Rose’s line up of his ‘teachers’ is very impressive, starting with the Clydie cross, Peace Matinee…

Shane and his first star, Peace Matinee

He was quarter Clydesdale. You can see some Clydie crosses and they are very heavy, he was definitely more on the Thoroughbred side. Mum bought him for me when I was 13, he was a failed showjumper. He was amazing, I used to ride him bareback after school, all that sort of thing. I went through Pony Club with him, Games, Sporting, and dressage was probably not his strong area, probably because of all of that.

He was the first Advanced horse I had. He won the Australian One Day Event championships at Goondiwindi, probably 1994. I did my first three-star with him at Gawler 1993. My watch didn’t work and I got in trouble from Denis Goulding, our Australian team vet, for being a minute under time. The horse could gallop, and jump, but he used to blow-up and get a bit tense in the dressage, we would be last quite often after the first phase. I remember one year we were last after the dressage at Melbourne 3DE by ten marks.

If he didn’t do Pony Club and chasing cattle and all the wild stuff I did on him, the dressage would have been better. He had the ability to do amazing dressage but I didn’t quite know what I was doing.

I learnt to jump and gallop fences on him, he was an amazing jumper. He won a Grand Prix showjumping at Kiama towards the end of his career. I brought him in from the paddock. He had three shoes, and I thought, he’ll be right, he’s good on his feet. He lost another shoe after the first round, lost another after the second, and I thought I might as well take the other one off.

Basically he is the reason I ride cross country the way I do, he was very balanced, and I could gallop. We used to run around the bush all the time, we had a great partnership. I think he enjoyed what we did together, and he became very careful – he would have barely had a pole down in his eventing jumping. I grew up with him, every day after school I’d ride him round to my girlfriend’s place, tie him to the fence, and ride him home.

Maybe a lot of kids don’t have the opportunity now, but back then our horses were part of our growing up. We were lucky where I grew up, there was a bunch of kids and we would go galloping across the fire trails of Terrey Hills, running amok. I’d did all my gallops on the trails and I would ride one and lead one, horrific now, you wouldn’t think of it.

I used to think that horses didn’t know much about people – not like a dog, feed a dog and it’s loyal – but I do think you can certainly have that kind of relationship with a horse if you spend enough time with him.

But I learnt very quickly with the next few horses that they don’t all jump as well as he did. I had an Appaloosa after him, I think I fell off him three events in a row. At St Gregs, they used to jump a stone wall, either side of a road, at four and five, and I was starting to get a bit paranoid. He left a knee on the first one, so I bailed out, but he didn’t fall over, so I kept running along with him and vaulted back on and kept going. They still eliminated me.

MR JOE COOL

After that Mr Joe Cool, how did you come by him?

There was an American lady who was agisting her horse in Terrey Hills – Joe Cool. Where she had her other horses, they didn’t want a colt, we said we’d take him. She was leading him across a ditch one day and he jumped and broke her leg, so I started riding him for her. He was an ugly little Thoroughbred, pretty to look at, but he had a short neck, roached back, crooked legs. He made a really nice picture when you rode him, but standing still he was not a glamorous horse. He was really spooky at the beginning of his career and he would stop at lots of little things, but once he got confident he was a very good jumper, very trainable, very fast.

I had started to learn how to ride dressage. He was probably one of the first ones that I did well with on the flat. He was winning events because he did well on the flat, not just because I could gallop fast cross country. In 95, he went three-star and won three Advanced events in a row, that was the first time I’d done that.

We won the Young Riders event in New Zealand, he won a lot of One Day Events but was never a big three-star winner.

It’s A Knockout, I got him in 1997. He was a very naughty horse. Nikki Richardson had him, and he stopped in the steeplechase at Werribee and she thought, maybe that is enough. So I started riding him. He was probably the first ‘proper’ horse I had. Joe Cool was amazing, but he was little and not a classy type of horse. It’s A Knockout was a big strong solid horse. He was very good on the flat, Nikki had done a great job with him and he would win the dressage more often than not.

He was naughty, and to start with, I just rode him as though he had stopped at every fence. Even if it was a log, I came to it thinking, you’ve already stopped at it so I am going to give you a bit of a touch up… just in case. I did that until I got him coming to the fence not looking and spooking and thinking backwards. As we came to the fence I’d actually have to be saying, no, slow down, stay together. I just tried to get him to think about wanting to jump the jump, so he was pulling me into every fence.

IT’S A KNOCKOUT

He was always ditchy though. I’ve had plenty of horses that will look into a ditch, but he would look into a ditch and genuinely worry about it. I remember at Pratoni, at the 1998 WEG, there was a massive ditch at about fence four or five, really early on. Oh well, there’s no way around it, and he was so good at everything else and fast, he could really run and jump. We got over the ditch and I thought, that’s it, we’ve got it. He was 8th or 9th after the dressage and not many had gone quick. That was an opportunity, but unfortunately he’d picked up a bacterial infection in his lung when he was in England, similar to asthma. It was fine when he was just working, no cough or anything, but when he hit the wall, he couldn’t get any oxygen in, he just stopped, and that’s what happened. It took us a while to figure out what had gone wrong, but that was it. That was my first time on an Aussie team, I had a couple of bad ones before they got better.

It’s A Knockout was a great horse, but he had his limitations, he was always a little backwards in his thinking. If you take on the ride of a horse that has been allowed to get away with things over a period of time, it is going to take the same period of time to fix them as it did to get it. So the horse that has been naughty for a day, it will take you a day to fix it.

Similarly if a horse is ditchy or genuinely worried about something, you can fix them if you get them from the start – when I say fix them, I mean get them to a stage where they are not so concerned, they will still look. But if they have an issue and they’ve had that issue for a while and you haven’t been able to get to it, that takes a lot longer to try and rectify. Horses are horses, you can change them to a degree, but ultimately their temperament is going to be the same. If a horse is naughty, it is always going to have an element of that in it, you can modify their temperament but ultimately it is going to be the same.

One of the good things about our sport is that while getting older might slow your reflexes down, the knowledge you have enables you to continue to improve, and handle the challenges better.

Then comes Miss Dior, she was an amazing mare. That was the first Warmblood I had, but she was a Warmblood with a lot of Thoroughbred – her sire was 50:50, She certainly threw to the Thoroughbred. She was hot, she looked like a Thoroughbred and she ran all day and was quick as well. Some Warmbloods will run all day but they are slow, she was quick. When I got her I found her very tricky on the flat, she was really rubber necked and my hands have never been my greatest attribute on the flat. I’d give her a half halt and nothing would change except her neck would touch her rump.

MISS DIOR

Her strength was that she was competitive – the first horse I had that would know it was at a competition. At home she was just a jumper, but take her to a show and she just didn’t want to touch anything, and loved cross country.

Very quickly I was riding her in a snaffle, and we got on really well, because I allowed her to run and she ended up not being strong at all. Let the reins go on the buckle and canter round and she would almost do it by herself. She had an amazing desire to jump, if you were off line, she would look at the flags and know to go between them.

MISS DIOR

She went on to win Adelaide. In 2004, I thought she probably should have been one of the first picked for Athens, not only was she not first-picked, she wasn’t even on the squad. I remember Jim Dunn, when he was head of the selectors, used to say to me, who do you think is in front of you? It’s a good thought, because then you do think, oh yeah, I’m behind… but this time, in eighteen months the only person who had beaten her was Rebel Morrow and Groover – they went on to be our best combination at Athens. At the selection event, Miss Dior was third – really solid, showjumped well, really good cross country and her dressage had been getting better and better. She wasn’t picked and went to Adelaide and won by 20 points.

I think she was 18 or 19 when she retired and I thought it was the perfect end for her, just to say to the selectors, well you got it wrong that time.

After that comes All Luck? 

I’d broken my leg riding one of Niki’s (Niki Rose, Shane’s wife) young horses. I had to do something, so we went looking for some horses to buy and sell. Niki had to ride them. Niki is a lovely rider, but doesn’t like riding other people’s horses. It could be a World Cup horse, and she’d probably jump it 90 centimetres, and think that was big enough. When we first saw Lucky he was hairy like the wooliest thing you’ve ever seen. He was really sweet on the flat, he poked around and did everything. He was a really cute jumper and she was jumping a metre twenty, wow. We are going to buy this one, and surprise surprise, Niki says I really like this one.

ALL LUCK

We got him vetted and there were a couple of things that if you were going to sell him overseas, would have been talking points. He had an old arthritic spur in the fetlock, a few things like that, I didn’t think they were an issue, just a management thing. But if you sell them overseas they want pristine x-rays. I thought I’ll buy him, and Angela Shacklady who owned It’s a Knockout went in on him with me.

ALL LUCK IN THE DRESSAGE AT CAMDEN

He was another amazing horse. Very good on the flat, amazing jumper. Cross country I could have ridden him in a halter. I used to use one of those rubber vulcanite things, just so he would lean on the bit. Beautiful mover, great frame, wonderful temperament, gallop like the wind, easy to jump, just a really nice horse. Unfortunately, probably the only thing that let him down was that he was always niggling with an injury, not always the same thing, just little things here and there. He didn’t miss a lot of work, but you couldn’t really drill him. If you gave him short preparations, he was great.

He’d raced, but he’d raced spasmodically because he was always lame, shin splints, all sorts of sorenesses. He didn’t break down, but he was always hard to get a preparation out of him.

I was getting better on the flat, but if I had him now with some of the coaches that are a little more sympathetic to the way our horses go, he could have been amazing. We were always pushing him and pressuring him back then. Unfortunately EI probably wrecked our chances, I couldn’t take him to Adelaide so I had to take him to Sydney where Cara Witham as head of the Ground Jury, couldn’t even tell what leg he was lame on in the trot up. What that meant was I had to do a preparation on top of a preparation on top of a preparation.

So I had to go to Melbourne before we went to the Games in Hong Kong, and unfortunately by the time he got to Hong Kong he had had enough, he was physically and mentally cooked. He should have won a gold medal, if a few things had been different, but as a horse he was the most talented I’ve had. The only thing that let him down were those niggling injuries. He was so rideable, so brave, just unfortunate that he didn’t have the body to hold him.

He lived just down the road where a friend of ours did a little bit of dressage with him. He was a chronic windsucker, we’ve had plenty of windsuckers and it doesn’t affect them. I think it is a lot about their personality and a lot of them end up being good eventers because of their personality, they are quite chilled out, relaxed horses – I’m sure windsucking is like smoking, just a nervous twitch. If you tied him to the float he would always come back to the end of his lead, and you thought it was weird but it was so he could put his teeth on his lead and windsuck off his lead. Now he’s got no teeth!

When he first when to our friend’s he was chewing up all the fences so they put little rubber squares up around the fence so he didn’t have to go too far to have a windsuck.

CP Qualified failed spectacularly as a showjumper, Niki’s Mum didn’t want him as a dressage horse, and the young rider down in Victoria found him a bit difficult – so he ends up with you…

If I was a horse, I’d be like him or Virgil, just annoying, obnoxious, a little bit cheeky, but also quite liking doing what they are doing. They are quite similar in many aspects. Darcy (CP Qualified) in particular, because he was a colt longer, has a lot of coltish traits. He’s a horse that I have to get after occasionally. He’s spooky but occasionally he spooks at something and thinks this is fun I can keep spooking. He’ll do it three times and then I’ll say you know what? You can’t do it anymore! We’ll have a bit of an argument and he’ll say, I’m sorry I’ll concentrate.

CP QUALIFIED

The thing that has probably improved with him the most is his desire, he just seems to want to do it now. I remember first seeing him when Christine Bates was riding him at a squad school, and he came in and jumped a fence, and you thought, wow this is amazing – then he came in three times more and each time whacked it out, that’s not so amazing.

I’ve probably touched on it a bit with Miss Dior, it is probably a part of my personality to let them be themselves. I know that he is a bit naughty and a bit cheeky, and I certainly keep him under the thumb, but in saying that, I also let him express himself. I don’t want to take away his personality, because that’s what makes him special. In the dressage he is eye-catching, and part of that is he wants to say, everyone look at me. If I keep hammering that away from him, then he is going to less and less want to do things, and get cranky and miserable. I allow him to be himself. He’s a nice horse, and as long as he is not doing something wrong, I’ll let him express himself.

I remember jumping him at home not long before I went to Adelaide, I had a fence set up where if he wasn’t going to be watching the front rail, he’d have it down. He’s come in and tapped it, he was feeling a bit fresh and when he landed he was farting about, I came round again and he tried really hard and just tapped it, then he was so angry, farting and jumping up and down. I gave him a little walk and then I came round again and he was like three feet above it. I thought, he’s wanting to do the right thing.

He is so fun to ride at home. He gives a great feeling when he is jumping, and on the flat he is really good. This year, I’ve been to two three-day events. At Taupo, we absolutely nailed everything, fabulous test, warm up great, plan was great. At Adelaide, a few things in the warm up weren’t quite right – which I know now, at the time I thought it was going to be fine, but it wasn’t. When he started out, he was always tired in his dressage test, so I would be booting the crap out of him to get him to move – he’s so much fitter and stronger now, and I am still riding him as if he is going to get tired. At Adelaide, every time he was just about to go well in the warm up, I’d think, give him a break because I don’t want him to get tired. When I went into the test, it just wasn’t right.

At Taupo he was with me, but I can’t rely on that state of mind, I’ve got to make sure. I know I can now, we’ve talked about it, and I am sure I can improve on it.

Next the horse Shane rode to Victory in the 2023 Adelaide 5* Three Day event

How did you get Virgil?

Brett Jones and Michelle Hasibar bred him. Somehow they acquired a beautiful big Thoroughbred mare, they had her for a year and put it in foal to Vivant. The mare was sold to Victoria, and Michelle started riding Virgil, and she said he used to bolt on her – in trot! She would be working him around, and he’d just go oh look, I’m going over there. Just a big strong thing, like a Great Dane, I’m sure they are really nice, but they can run over the top of you in play, not knowing their strength. He’s a really Bolshie character. Michelle had done a really good job with him as a four-year-old, and started doing metre classes, but he just jumped too big and she couldn’t ride him. She went to sell him and a showjumper looked at him and they were umming and aahing, so Michelle said to me, just take him for a month and see what you think of him.

I rode him on the flat one day, jumped him the next day and rang her up and said, how much do you want for him, I’ll buy him now. He was just amazing to jump, strong, careful, scope to burn as well. I don’t care how much you want, I want to buy him! So we bought a half share.

VIRGIL

He’s a really funny horse. He has to be the centre of attention. If you are near him, and you are not involving him, he’s just horrendous. At Adelaide, the Southern Cross stables they used to have foam matting in them – it was shredded. Pawing – can you stop playing with him and look at me? When you cross tie him, he paws to get attention. After we put rubber down at home, he wasn’t making enough noise, so he goes to the side and paws and hits the post. He’s not agitated or upset, he just wants attention.

He licks. I always play with their muzzles, and he is always licking. He is actually a really playful, gentle horse, but he’ll tread on your toe, and he’ll bash you with his head. He doesn’t realize he is as big as he is. He’s a lot like that when you ride him, he can be inattentive, but he is so powerful. Some horses can be strong but not powerful, and he is so powerful but probably not as strong as the grey horse. With Qualified, I can get him to do short steps for fifteen minutes, if he’s on the bit and he can cope. Whereas Virgil, I can get him to jump huge fences from a standstill, but he hasn’t go the strength to repeat exercises over and over – it will come in time.

Virgil has always done everything off his natural ability.

On the flat, when you make him do something, he says that’s hard, but he’s good, if you make him concentrate he does start to enjoy it. I think after the little break he’s having now, he’s going to come in and go to the next level over the next few months. He’s only just turned ten, he’s coming into his prime.

I can’t believe how slow he looks, and how fast he is…

The timer wasn’t quite right at Adelaide. I was about three seconds under, and they had me right on time. He is now more rideable. When I first had him going three-star, he was difficult to get back, whereas now he is good to ride, he is adjustable, he’s watching. He doesn’t find them big, even the big fences you just canter in, and – I don’t want to sound cocky – it feels like you are going around a one-star class. If something is not quite right, just put a little leg on, and he goes, oh god I better concentrate. He is very easy like that, and he gallops well. Because I don’t have to waste time in amongst them, and he gallops easily, I don’t have to look like I am going fast.

Want to breed yourself an eventer? International Horse Breeders has a range of stallions to suit your mare, including Vivant, the sire of Virgil:

go to www.ihb.com.au

For more articles with Shane Rose, go to:

Rose, Shane