McLain Ward’s Olympic and Pan American Games medal-winning mount Contagious has retired, Ward announced in a social media post.

“Contagious is horse who has always given his best, and at times more than that,” wrote Ward. “We hoped for him to be a successful grand prix horse. In the end he became a championship star, competing successfully at a World Games, [a] World Cup Final, a Pan Am Games, winning team gold and individual bronze. His crowning achievement was being a member of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic team that brought home a silver medal.”

The 16-year-old Zweibrùcker (Contagio—For Mary, For Keeps) was bred by Andreas Eisenmenger in Germany, and first competed in young horse classes with German rider Julia Beck. In mid-2017, U.S. Olympian Reed Kessler purchased him and brought him up to the four-star level. When Kessler decided to go to school in 2018, Beechwood Stables LLC acquired the gelding for Ward. Almost immediately, they started winning, with a blue in the qualifier for the American Gold Cup (New York).

The following year, Ward made his Nations Cup debut with the chestnut at the Winter Equestrian Festival (Florida), where they helped the U.S. team take top honors. That year they won the grand prix at Upperville (Virginia) before being named to the U.S. team for the 2019 Pan American Games (Peru) but withdrew ahead of the competition due to injury.

Contagious returned to the show ring the following summer and won classes at HITS Saugerties (New York), Traverse City (Michigan) and Tryon (North Carolina). In 2021, he and Ward helped the U.S. to a podium finish at the Nations Cup in Rome with a double-clear performance and were second in the Longines Grand Prix of Rotterdam (the Netherlands), earning themselves a spot on the team for the Tokyo Olympic Games, where the U.S. won silver after a jump-off with Sweden.

In 2022, he won grand prix classes at WEF and Devon (Pennsylvania) before topping two classes at CHIO Aachen (Germany). That spring, they competed at the Longines FEI Jumping World Cup Final in Leipzig, Germany, where they won the second leg and ultimately finished seventh. They also represented the U.S. at the Agria FEI Jumping World Championships in Denmark.

In 2023, they were on the winning Nations Cup team at San Juan Capistrano International (California), before being named to the team for the Pan American Games (Chile), where they earned team gold and individual bronze.

Last year, Ward and Contagious won a four-star grand prix at $215,000 FEI Horseware Ireland Grand Prix CSI4* at WEF and topped classes at the Dublin Horse Show, the Hampton Classic (New York) and CSI Greenwich (Connecticut). His last competition was the CSI Geneva (Switzerland) last December.

Contagious will retire to Beechwood Stables in Weston, Massachusetts.