HOW many horses compete in two Olympic Games? And win a team gold medal at their first and record an individual top-10 place second time around? That’s the formidable record of Mr Medicott, the five-star event horse that fulfilled his breeder’s faith in him.

Mr Medicott was bred in Castleisland, Co Kerry by the late Dr Donal Geaney. “My father was convinced that he was going to be a star. I wasn’t quite as sure!” his son Donie recalled.

Foaled in 1999, the future Olympic horse was by Cruising out of the family’s Edmund Burke mare, Slieveluachra. Named after the mountainous area around the Kerry/Cork region, the original name for her “striking chesnut colt with white socks” was Crag Cave Slieveluachra.

“Crag Cave was the visitor attraction business my mother [Margaret] started when my father retired from being a GP. He was immensely proud of her achievement and had called his special horse after the caves and Slieveluachra, the mare l used to jump. I jumped her in novice classes up to when she was a six-year-old and she was a lovely, quality mare.”

In his Breeders’ 10 feature last autumn, Donie described how horses took a backseat while the family business was being developed. Slieveluachra, sourced from Askeaton horseman Sean O’Shaughnessy, was instead put in foal to Cruising.

An opportune match in 1998, as the stallion and Trevor Coyle recorded a string of victories that year, including two World Cup qualifier wins at Millstreet and Geneva, the Lucerne Grand Prix and an individual eighth-place finish in the World Equestrian Games in Rome.

Produced by Francis Connors as a youngster, Mr Medicott’s first competition was in a 90cm class at Ballyrafter, a venue and indeed a rider that have both launched several good horses’ careers. 20 years ago, the Geaneys sold their home-bred horse, with his two SJI points, at Goresbridge Sales. “Mr Medicott left us as a five-year-old. It’s hard to believe that four years later, he would be at the Olympics!” said Donie.

Phillip Dutton riding Mr Medicott into third place at the Rolex five-star in Kentucky in 2014 \ ROLEX/Kit Houghton

The German years

German owner Gerd-Hermann Horst bought the traditional Irish Sport Horse as a six-year-old from Nigel Taylor in the UK. Then re-named Mr Medicott, the horse was redirected to an eventing career and showed early promise at the 2006 World Breeding Federation for Sport Horses (WBFSH) championships at Le Lion d’Angers, where he placed fifth.

Just two years later, ‘Cave’ and Frank Ostholt were selected for the Hong Kong Olympics, after consistent top-six results on home ground at Marbach, Luhmühlen and Aachen that summer. Their clear show jumping round helped seal Germany’s team gold medal at the Olympics.

Name and prefix changes make keeping track of horses difficult, but news of Mr Medicott’s success reached Castleisland. “I never heard anything about him until my friend Darren, whom I had been in college with, had asked me about a horse on the German team that had been bred by Dr Donal Geaney. That was the first I heard about Mr Medicott.”

“My father passed away in 2006, so 2008 wasn’t that long after his death. He would have been so proud of his horse going to the Olympics and it would most definitely have been a dream come true for him to see his horse win a gold medal.”

Donie himself though was reunited with Mr Medicott. “I was going to see some caves in north Germany and was lucky enough to meet Mr Medicott and Frank Ostholt. He brought out his original passport - Crag Cave Slieveluachra - saying his name with typical German pronunciation.”

He was to see the 16.3hh gelding in action at his second Olympic Games, this time with the US flag on the horse’s saddlecloth.

The German eventing team was a force to be reckoned with in 2011. European team champions on home ground at Luhmühlen, there was an unprecedented clean sweep too of the top-four individual places by German riders, headed by Michael Jung and surely another horse of a lifetime candidate: La Biosthetique Sam FBW.

Frank Ostholt competed as an individual at those European championships, not with Mr Medicott, but with Little Paint. A German-bred but with all the phenotype characteristics of his maternal grandsire I’m A Star, the dark bay Little Paint even had the trademark star marking of I’m A Star offspring.

Mr Medicott placed 10th at Pau that autumn with Frank, although it was to be their final competition. The following month, on November 17th, the German Federation announced that Mr Medicott was sold to an American syndicate.

It was a double blow for the German team. They had now lost 50% of their Hong Kong gold medal horsepower in the run-up to the London Olympics as Cave’s news followed the sale of Andreas Dibowski’s Butts Leon to Thailand’s Nina Ligon.

Frank Ostholt was pragmatic though about the owner’s decision, telling Germany’s premier equestrian magazine St Georg: “When you pay the bills each month, there comes a point when you want to see some money coming back.”

The proud breeders who produced some of the horsepower for the Irish and US teams at the 2012 London Olympic Games, l-r: Michael Doyle & his mother, Phyllis (centre), Enniscorthy, who bred Master Crusoe (IRL); Donal Geaney, Castleisland, whose late father Donal snr. bred dual Olympic horse, Mr Medicott (Germany/USA); Jimmy Ryan, Clonmel, who bred Electric Cruise (IRL) and Adrian Bourke, Ballina, who bred Ringwood Magister (USA). Credit: Susan Finnerty

A second Olympics

12 years on from the London Olympics and with the benefit of hindsight, it proved to be a vintage Olympics for Traditional Irish Horses with three in the top 10. A landmark result too for Master Imp offspring, with Master Crusoe (Breeder: Phyllis & Michael Doyle) and Ireland’s Aoife Clarke in seventh, closely followed by High Kingdom (Breeder: William Micklem) and Zara Tindall, eighth. The best US eventing result at London? Mr Medicott and Karen O’Connor (ninth).

Cave had returned to the U.S. in 2011, (one year on from his WEG appearance, when he finished 21st individually at Kentucky), this time under the ownership of the Mr Medicott Syndicate.

The purpose of this purchase was as a possible Olympic horse for Karen O’Connor. Ultimately, the new combination had just one season together, but threw down their bid for Olympic selection with a fourth place at the 2012 Rolex Kentucky Horse Trials.

They followed up with a CCI4*-S win at Bromont, over the border in Canada, before travelling to the UK for the final pre-London outing at Barbury Castle.

Donie was one of several Irish breeders who made the convenient trip to London to watch their Irish-breds compete at Greenwich Park. Before the breeders scattered to watch ‘their’ horse in action cross-country, there was time for a quick photo of this group: Michael Doyle and his mother Phyllis, Donie, Jimmy Ryan and Adrian Bourke. The latter pair had bred Joseph Murphy’s Irish team horse Electric Cruise and another US team horse, Ringwood Magister, competed by Tiana Coudray.

Quantifying the cost of breeding and raising horses can be done through spreadsheets and receipts, but it’s impossible to measure the sense of pride felt by that group in Greenwich that day.

Mr Medicott and O’Connor added just 5.6 time penalties to their dressage score to finish as the best-placed US combination.

And the Germans need not have fretted, as they successfully defended their team title at Greenwich Park, while La Biosthetique Sam FBW and Michael Jung won individual gold.

“I was lucky enough to see Mr Medicott on the cross-country day in Greenwich Park. He went on to become the number one-ranked event horse, was the United States Eventing Association’s Horse of the Year and he also brought the Irish Sport Horse studbook to number one in the world rankings that year in eventing,” said Donie.

There was another reunion between some of the Greenwich group that November at the Irish Horse Board awards in the Amber Springs Hotel in Gorey, where the Geaneys, Doyles and Clare Ryan, who sourced both Master Crusoe and Ringwood Magister, received various well-deserved awards.

Can I jump it?" Mr Medicott locks on to the Flowerpot skinny (Photo: Susan Finnerty)

Finish on a good note

Back in late April that year, when Mr Medicott had placed fourth at Rolex Kentucky, another Irish-bred finished in 10th place: Mighty Nice (Ard Ohio - Sarazen. Breeder: William Kells) and Philip Dutton.

The Cavan-bred was ultimately to be Dutton’s Rio Olympics horse after a string of unforeseen circumstances.

Following a career-ending fall from the Dutch-bred mare Veronica at Morven Park Fall Horse Trials in October 2012, Karen O’Connor retired. The Mr Medicott Syndicate regrouped and the ride was offered to Australian-born Dutton, who incidentally had won the 2008 Rolex Kentucky on another Irish-bred: Connaught (Ballysimon - Bromehill Rogue, by Royal Rogue. Breeder: Michael Kelly).

Although niggling injuries ruled ‘Cave’ out of contention for his third Olympics, Mighty Nice proved more than a capable substitute winning an individual bronze medal with Philip Dutton - Rolex Kentucky was again the setting for the pair’s finest hour. Dutton and Cave’s fourth place amongst a stellar international line-up in 2017 also earned them the USEF national championship title.

“Cave was so talented in all three phases, which is pretty hard to find in a horse, especially at five-star level,” Philip Dutton told The Irish Field this week.

“Even the way the standard of today’s sport has risen so much, he would still be very competitive today. Added to that, I’ve never had a horse that just loved to compete more than Cave. At home, in training, he would be pretty bored but at the shows, he came to life.”

“My time with Cave was unfortunately near the end of his career - his body was getting some wear and tear from his long career. We were fortunate to let him drop down a few levels and do his final event with my daughter Olivia at his owner’s event at Rebecca Farm.”

Mr. Medicott retired in 2018 after competing at those North American Youth Championships in Kalispell, Montana. He spent the rest of his retirement at Jacqueline Mars’ Stonehall Farm in Virginia, where the 24-year-old died last September.

Donie Geaney was preparing to go to Lanaken when the news reached him about Mr Medicott.

“He was a horse of a lifetime. That’s what he was really. It was amazing how he left a big impression on everyone that had him,” he said.

“When you’re breeding horses, you’re always thinking you mightn’t breed that special one, but he was.”

Each owner, breeder, rider, groom, and fan has a horse of a lifetime, but what better ambassador to start this new series about such horses than the Kerry-bred that went to two Olympic Games?

Did you know?

  • Patricia Good, from Rineen, West Cork, bred two half-sisters from her Awkward Brief mare, Golden Brief: Slieveluachra (Edmund Burke) in 1981 and Rineen Classic (Bassompierre) in 1984. Both mares later produced famous five-star event horses. Patricia’s daughter Lindy bred Pippa Funnell’s dual Badminton winner Supreme Rock (2002, 2003), also by Edmund Burke from Rineen Classic and Slieveluachra was the dam of Mr Medicott.
  • There’s another Cork connection, this time to Little Paint, Frank Ostholt’s individual bronze medal-winner at the 2011 European eventing championships. Registered with Germany’s ZfDP studbook, Little Paint was by the coloured stallion Nitron and out of the imported Irish mare Thank You (I’m A Star). Although there are no I’m A Star fillies, foaled in 1984 and named Thank You on IHR Online, one unnamed filly is recorded as being bred by the late JJ Harty. According to Horse Telex, the former Teagasc Darrara Agricultural College principal was indeed Thank You’s breeder, while her dam is the Slyguff Hero mare, Acot.
  • Nina Ligon also competed Tipperary Liadhnan (See Breeders’ 10 page 91) in 2012, as well as the former German team horse, Butts Leon.
  • Crag Cave, just outside Castleisland, was discovered under the Geaney family farm in 1983. Filled with stalactites and stalagmites, the ‘Crystal Gallery’ and ‘The Cathedral’ are two landmarks of the 3.81 kilometre-long caves.
  • Castleisland has links to several famous horses. Mr Medicott for one, then David Broome’s Mr Ross (Carnival Night) was bred by the Geaney’s neighbour, Michael Loughlin. “Another man with a great passion for breeding horse,” Donie remarked.
  • Master Crusoe also had a Kingdom link. According to Bill Maguire, Aoife Clarke’s London Olympics horse was formerly owned and competed by Ruth, Mark and Zoe McElligott, from Castleisland, before the Master Imp gelding’s later sale to the Lily White Syndicate. He was bred across the country in Oylegate, Co. Wexford by Michael Doyle and his late mother Phyllis, both present at Greenwich.
  • The most recent jockey for Master Crusoe’s 148cm Grade A half-sister Slaney Capitalist Cruise (Capitalist), is Ciara Geaney, the youngest of Donie and Lisa’s four children. Dan, their eldest, works at Pinehollow Farm, managed by David Blake. He’s the second of the Geaney family to be reacquainted with ‘Cave’ as, during a show in Virginia last summer, he visited the horse at Stonehall Farm. Jack is now working in a yard in the Netherlands and Conor manages the yard at home.
  • As any dealer or seller will tell you, “What a horse does in his own spare time is his own business” and Mr Medicott’s after-hours habit was crib-biting. “If he was ever in the barn you knew where he was at, because you could hear him!” said Philip Dutton.
  • Mars Equestrian, a stakeholder in the Mr Medicott Syndicate through Jacqueline Mars patronage, is the title sponsor of the 2024 Badminton Horse Trials.
  • The famous Snickers bar is named after one of the Mars family’s horses.

    • By the numbers

    350 - million years since the formation of Crag Cave.

    50 - FEI event completions by Mr Medicott.

    30 - Top-10 results in those 50 competitions.

    10 - countries Mr Medicott competed in: Canada, China, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, the UK and the USA.

    Three - future London Olympics horses in the Le Lion d’Angers seven-year-old championship: Mr Medicott, Happy Times (Sam Griffiths, Australia) and another Irish-bred, Kilrodan Abbott (Francis Younghusband). The latter was on the Canadian team in London with Peter Barry (Canada).

    Two - distinctive Cruising chesnuts in the London Olympics top-10: Flexible (Eighth, show jumping) and Mr Medicott (Ninth, eventing).

    One - WEG appearance for Mr Medicott and Frank Ostholt at the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games in Kentucky in 2010.