As a young man, Shane had to choose between rugby and horses, and the horses won. He runs a race horse breaking, pre-training and eventing facility – Bimbadeen Park – with his wife Niki who is also an elite eventing competitor. The couple also organise the CIC Eventing Equestriad at Camden.

Shane was part of the silver medal winning team at the Hong Kong Games – where he had the fastest clear round on the Thoroughbred, All Luck. He has competed at three WEGs, Rome with It’s A Knockout, Aachen with All Luck and Caen with Taurus.

Shane’s horse for Rio is the Holsteiner bred CP Qualified (Quite Capitol / Corofino) who was imported to Australia as a showjumper from the stables of Jan Tops – except Qualified just didn’t seem to care if he knocked the rails down! The horse was gelded, and sold several times, first as a dressage prospect, the second as a young rider’s eventer, and came back to Shane twice because he was ‘too naughty’. Shane started to ride him with a view to another sale and the pair clicked, getting better and better with each outing. The pair won the final Australian selection trial at Werribee and was looking forward to getting on the plan to Europe:

“Qualified was awesome, like really really strong. Super gallop, super brave, super rideable, he felt awesome. He’s lead up heading in towards Rio is spot on, he’s really close on the flat. I was a little annoyed with my test, he just got a little up in the neck when he went into the warmup ring, with all the yellow jackets in the distance, and I couldn’t quite get his neck down and his back up. I think we could take another five or six marks off that test, which is good – going 38 and being disappointed with the test. He’s just going to get better and better. It’s a bit of a shame that Virgil couldn’t make the trip because he’s got a bit of a temperature, hopefully he’ll be right again by the time I get home.”

In Aachen, Shane gave World Champion, Michael Jung a fright in the CIC –  ‘Michi’ won, but just by 0.4 from the Aussie! After Aachen, Shane was really looking forward to Rio:

“It’s a great team that is going to Rio, and Aachen was a confidence builder as well. We were good enough to match it with them – and just on an Australian thing it was great, it proves that we can be competitive from the other side of the world. Our best over there is as good as it needs to be. Obviously we need to keep pushing ourselves, but it does prove you can be Australian based and still competitive.”

Shane and Darcy (CP Qualified) take on the world at Aachen… Photo: eventingphoto.com