ELIZABETH Power has retired her five-star event horse Soladoun. The 15-year-old cross-country machine did not present for the final day of show jumping at Badminton Horse Trials and Power, alongside co-owner Richard Ames, decided to call an end to his brilliant career after a re-occurring injury.

The French-bred grey by Madoun won as a three-year-old on the flat before Power bought him from Alan King’s training yard in Britain. His eventing career started in 2012 and among his career highlights is a ninth-place finish at Burghley in 2018. Soladoun missed time in recent years through injury, including the whole of 2019 and part of 2020 and 2021. They shot up the leaderboard to 20th after cross-country at the recent Badminton Horse Trials, picking up just 6.4 time penalties over a monster track.

“The thing that made him incredible is that he shouldn’t be a good event horse, and the fact he was makes him more amazing,” Power told The Irish Field. “He was not built to do dressage, he was never bad at it but when you see the shape of him and how he was built, he was never going to compete with the likes of London 52, but the fact he did as well as he did just shows his love for life.”

There were four standout runs in their career together. “Finishing third at the British Open at Gatcombe, which was also an ERM, was pretty special. That was a big day and a good pay day. Another was at Chatsworth which is renowned by horses not making the time, yet he trounced it!

“Burghley was a roller coaster week and he was exceptional. I’ve jumped around Burghley clear before but I’ve never gotten that feeling of it being so easy. And then Badminton, given how tough it was, he was brilliant. I’ll never sit on an engine quite like that again. He has a bit of an unfulfilled career in aspects, in that he never really got a crack at the big ones, which is a bit sad.”

Hale Bob injured

Ingrid Klimke’s multiple medal-winning horse SAP Hale Bob OLD suffered a tendon injury during the cross-country at last weekend’s World Championships test event in Pratoni del Vivaro, Italy.

Klimke said he hurt himself between fences and she immediately pulled him up. The 18-year-old gelding has won two individual European Champion titles in 2017 and 2019, plus two European team gold medals and team silver. The pair were individual bronze medallists at the 2018 WEG IN Tryon, USA, and won team gold at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.