Yesterday many of us were saddened to hear the news that Jeepster – Stuart Tinney’s gold medal winning mount from the Sydney 2000 Olympics had died at the grand age of 26.
For those of us who watched Stuart and Jeepster at Sydney the memory of the victorious Australian team doing their lap of honor will never leave us. As Jeepster stood in the winning line up receiving cheers from spectators you got the feeling that he, along with his ‘stable mates’, knew they had done something special.
What made Jeepsters success even better for many Australian eventing enthusiasts was that he was an Australian horse, who had competed on the Australian circuit, and he was part of 'our' eventing world.
Not only were Stuart and Jeepster part of the gold medal winning team they were also the combination to finish with the best overall score in the teams competition – quite an achievement.
As a member of the Tinney Eventing Team Jeepster, who started his life as a racehorse, and Stuart clocked up many successes both at home in Australia and overseas including a ninth placing in 1998 at the World Equestrian Games in Rome.
"Jeepster has been a great and loving friend for many years. We competed together all over the world for over 10 years with great results, culminating in his Olympic gold medal in Sydney. He has been happily retired on our property for the past seven years and over the past few months he has been fighting Lymphoma. Jeepster has been a very big part of our family’s life and we will miss him dearly,” Stuart said.
Amy McGregor came to work for Tinney Eventing the year after the Sydney Olympics and was always in awe of Jeepster.
“He was such a lovely horse to be with and I felt very honored to be part of his story. He was the kind of horse who made you work that little bit harder and do as much as you could for him because he tried so hard himself. When he was really fit he could be a bit cheeky but only in the way he would put his head up making it almost impossible to put a bridle on him.”
Jeepster was more often than not out at competitions with his stable mate Tex, who died in January this year. It almost seems fitting that these two wonderful horses have now ‘retired’ to the paddock in the sky within months of each other.
Jeepster, for obvious reasons, holds a special place in Stuart’s heart. He wasn’t the easiest horse or even the most talented horse Stuart has ever ridden, but he gave his all and that’s what Stuart found special. Jeepster, bought by Michael Pribula, came to Stuart as a willful five year old in 1993 from show jumper Krissy Harris, who had found him quite difficult.
In an attempt to make him more agreeable Krissy had asked her husband Heath, who trains horses for films, to do a bit of work with him. Prior to arriving at the Tinneys’ he had been taught to do a few tricks: how to bow, lie down and do the Spanish walk. Over the years the Spanish-walk-trick would reappear the minute the big gay horse felt under pressure and it took Stuart a long time to put together a good dressage test that was consistent throughout rather than diving from eights to threes!
