We can’t resist it – New Zealand is so close to Australia so when there are some interesting ties between winning Kiwis such as Jock Paget and Australia, we hope our Trans Tasman friends won’t mind if we bring it to the world’s attention. After all, New Zealand seems very blessed in the eventing world right now so maybe they won’t begrudge Australia a little mention!
Let’s start with the rider. Jock was born in Wellsford, New Zealand but moved to Sydney in 1986 at the age of five. As is now well known, Jock didn’t actually start riding until he was 18 years old and then moved to Queensland to work and train with Australian eventer Kevin McNab. Kevin helped bring out the natural latent talent in Jock who quickly rose through the ranks, going from never having jumped a fence to 3* level in under two years.
Like Jock, Kevin is now based in the UK while British eventer Charlotte Price manages Kevin’s equestrian property, Kelecyn in Queensland.
Now let’s look at the horse. Jock Paget’s winning horse at Badminton, Clifton Promise, is a 15 year old New Zealand thoroughbred, owned by Frances Stead. He was tried for racing before being bought by Frances and taken on by Jock when still at Novice level. Interestingly, Promise is out of an Australian thoroughbred mare called Darn Style who was also the dam of one of Australia’s top eventing horses – GV Top of the Line.
GV Top of the Line, now owned by Sharon Ridgway, was sixth at the World Equestrian Games in Jerez in 2002 ridden for Australia by Olivia Bunn and has a whole stack of other international and 4* accolades to his name.
He was also recently the mount of Sam Griffith’s young niece, Nina, who evented him with great success and a lot of fun until he was retired to show jumping last year. He also was the mount of Mary King at EQUITANA Melbourne last year
Darn Style was put in foal to Golden Glimmer (Vain) and sent to New Zealand to foal down resulting in GV Top of the Line being born in New Zealand despite being all Australian bloodlines. She then produced some filly racehorses before foaling Clifton Promise by Engagement.
´A pretty amazing strike rate for a broodmare given that they were both just bred to race, not event’ points out Sharon
So, whether by nature of nurture, we think that Australia can claim a tiny bit of influence over the winning combination of Jock and Promise
