Australian eventer Hazel Shannon says that when you have a 20-year-old horse in active riding and competition, you “don’t have a big picture plan—it’s just a day by day thing.” But when your horse is WillingaPark Clifford, on some of those days you win the Adelaide International CCI5*-L (Australia). 

“I was just really happy that we finished another five-star, and he was sound and happy and still thriving in his 19th year—20th year, actually,” Shannon said of “Clifford,” the Australian Thoroughbred gelding (Passing Shot—Twin Pearls, Double Income), who finished at the top of the pack on a 45.9 last weekend. 

Remarkably, it was the pair’s fourth time returning home from Adelaide with a blue ribbon from the five-star, which they also won in 2016, 2018 and 2019, after moving up to the level there a decade ago (they finished seventh in their 2015 five-star debut). Shannon says she didn’t dream that she would be competing Clifford at this level for so long. But as he nears the end of his second decade, he’s still the same super competitor he’s always been.

“He’s such an athlete that he doesn’t really feel the difference between four- and five-stars, whereas a normal horse would,” she said. “So I think that’s probably my big takeaway from the weekend, is that he just did his normal job. His normal job is very hard for a horse to do at a five-star, but he doesn’t even blink at it. 

“I think it’s more than it being a thing special to Adelaide; I’d say it’s just that Clifford really thrives around the harder and higher tracks and five-stars,” she added.

The rider says Clifford is the same horse he’s always been—willing and reliable—since she met him in 2010 while a working student at Heath and Rozzie Ryan’s farm in New South Wales. The Tasmanian-bred gelding was recently off the track, but didn’t act it. 

“Before me, he was used, sort of like a school-horse scenario, in that if someone was coming and we didn’t know how experienced they were, we put them on the quietest horse in the property, which was Clifford,” she said. 

“He’s a quiet and reliable kind of guy,” she continued. “I’d say he’s got more of a fire in his belly now that he’s a five-star horse, but in the early days he was kind of more of a pony clubber, really.”

Hazel met her partner, Bronte Buttel, when both women were teens and working students at the Ryan’s farm. Buttel, who was then studying dressage, also remembers Clifford as an unassuming gelding quietly doing his job—but as the jumps got bigger, he just kept jumping them. 

“I’ve always kind of considered Clifford a bit of an introvert in a way,” Buttel said. “He’s never been one to show off. He’s just doing his job and loving it. But he’s never over-jumping the fences or doing big kick outs. You put the fence up an inch, he’ll jump an inch higher.”

Inch by inch, Clifford and Shannon made their way to the five-star level. Now, after more than a decade together, the horse Shannon calls “Mr. Reliable” isn’t just steady, he’s feeling better than ever. 

“He is still improving—so many people on the weekend told me that that’s the best dressage test they’ve ever seen him do,” Shannon said of this year’s Adelaide five-star. “He’s improving everywhere, which, it’s really quite remarkable. You kind of think you’ve peaked, and you’ve got the best that we can both do, and then he seems to find another gear. I know him so well, but he still keeps surprising me.”

Shannon said that they aren’t done improving. Recently, she’s been focused on slowing him down in the show jumping to make him more careful, and that work paid off at Adelaide. None of the 12 competitors who made it to show jumping went clear, but Clifford had just one rail. 

“His way of going is just getting better all the time,” Buttel said. “He’s giving the jumps a lot more room. I’ve looked back at old videos of Adelaide, and the difference between now and back then is amazing.”

The couple shares horse chores between their busy schedules, riding and studying (Buttel is in her second year studying nuclear medicine). At the farm, Buttel says Clifford seems happiest when they bring him in from the paddock to be ridden or trailered to a show. Because of his age, they have retirement in mind but know that, for now, Clifford enjoys his job. 

“I think what would make Clifford happy would be to keep being ridden,” Buttel said. “He loves coming in, and I think he gets quite offended if we put horses on the truck and he’s not there.”

But however much Clifford enjoys the job of five-star eventing, he’s never really grown to like the spotlight. 

“We kind of call him the grumpy old man nowadays,” Shannon said, laughing. “He doesn’t like being made pretty. He loves jumping, he loves galloping. But when we’re doing the dressage turnout and you bring the brush out, he is not impressed. He doesn’t really like the fussing of being the winner or making him pretty. But he’s a bit of an adrenaline junkie; he loves going out there and jumping and galloping.”

Shannon says she’s grateful for their long and winding path together, especially since they came to a crossroads in 2016 that left their future uncertain, when Allen Jennings, who owned Clifford with his wife Wendy Ward, suddenly passed away. 

It looked like the horse and rider, who were just about to compete in their first five-star at Adelaide, might be split up in the sale of the horse. That’s when Willinga Park owner Terry Snow stepped in with an eye to saving the pair, signing papers on the horse just in time for Clifford and Shannon to make the competition. 

“I turned up at the competition two days later, and I met Terry Snow for the first time, and Terry met me and Clifford,” she said. “We had a good competition and won and I got to give him a big cup, which was such a great way to start a partnership.” 

When Snow himself died this past August, he left Clifford to his longtime rider. The bittersweet gift moved Shannon, who is grateful to be trusted with the gelding’s future. Buttel says that no one knows the horse better than Shannon—something that became clear during a competition when Shannon came out of dressage worried that Clifford didn’t feel quite right. He’d shown a dip in energy so subtle it was imperceptible to anyone but her.

“Hazel completed the dressage, she came out of the arena, and she was really stressed because she said he’s too quiet. He’s sick—that’s not Clifford,” she said. “And we took his temperature, and the vets took blood, and there was no real indication that he was unwell, but Hazel just kept saying that he wasn’t well, and so we pulled him. And the next day he did have a raging temperature. She knew before you could medically put a finger on it.”

Their deep connection, forged over 15 years, is what Shannon attributes to their success. When the time comes, she hopes that same connection will allow Clifford to tell her when he is ready for retirement. 

“He really feels like a member of the family, really,” Shannon said. “I can’t remember a time without him. My eventing career has always included Clifford, so it’s going to be a strange day for me when he’s no longer going on the trucks. I mean, obviously eventing of course has its high and lows, but it’s been so nice to have such a reliable partner that I know, before we’re out of the startbox, he’s going to give me 110% and we’re completely on the same page.

“I’m sure he’s a once in a lifetime horse,” she continued. “I think I’ve probably been lucky enough to be able to appreciate this at the time of his career, and not be something that I look back on in the future. I very much have enjoyed my time and the special moments we’ve had together.”