The magic of Macken

When he sat on a horse it was magic,” was Iris Kellett’s succinct way of describing Eddie Macken when he first came to her school. Under that magic was also a calm impulse to ride that permeated his whole being. Sitting up on a local farmer’s horse that felt “just right” or daily visits to Gormley’s riding yard just out the road from his dad’s butcher shop on Main Street in Granard fanned his desire for the saddle. Anne Gormley recalls that you could set your watch by young Macken’s arrival at their yard to ride the ponies after school.

All of that came to a halt when he was enrolled at St Mel’s Collage Secondary School 20 miles away in Longford town.

“School was stressful for me and this led to the first decision I made in my life as I resolved, after a Christmas holiday, that I could not stay any longer. So I planned my escape. I packed my bag, ran across the football pitch, flagged down the Longford-Granard bus and made for home. I was happy to stay at home for the rest of my life and ride a few horses for local people,” he recalls.

Brian and Anne Gormley recognised the talent in this 19-year-old and introduced him to the great riding instructor Iris Kellett. So, in 1969 came the first of many fortuitous steps along the journey to greatness that happened for Eddie during the 1970s.

“At Iris’s I never got to sit on a horse for months until one day another student had trouble with a little mare that kept sending her flying. Iris asked me if I could ride it and because I was very used to this kind of thing I said I could. The problem was sorted and after that Miss Kellett allowed me to ride some novice horses and then her great European Champion Morning Light.”

Iris once said: “He [Eddie] came to me as a rough country boy but he had an excellent build, was supple, had the temperament, natural sensitivity and above everything else a feel for the horse.”

Going International

And so it began, and just 18 months after his arrival at Kellett’s he was on the first of his 28 Aga Khan teams at Dublin in 1970. One year later, with Oatfield Hills he had his first trip abroad to Ostend where he, Ned Campion and Larry Kiely won the Nations Cup. He came second in the Grand Prix there to Britain’s Paddy McMahon on the great Irish-bred Pennwood Forge Mill that went on to be European champion at Hickstead in 1973.

British Chef d’Equipe at Odstend that year was Hickstead Innovator Duggie Bunn. Eddie made many appearances at the all-England jumping course in Sussex after that. Having had a top-10 finish there in the 1973 Europeans, he joined Ned Campion for its hosting of the World Championship in 1974. And thus began his rise to world renown.

But he recalls, “in such company, I went there with zero expectations”. Instead of Oatfield Hills he chose a new arrival in Kellett’s stable, Pele, because he felt more comfortable on him.

Comfortable indeed. In the three legs of the Championship, he and Pele scored two firsts and an equal second to be in the horse-swapping final and then in a head-to-head tie-breaker with Germany’s Hartwig Steenken in which an unavoidable foot in the water had him take silver.

All of this was beamed live back to Ireland and, with that, the name Eddie Macken was indelibly etched in Irish minds.

Boomerang

Soon, fate intervened again. Steenken had been much impressed with Eddie and at that year’s Horse of the Year Show he invited him to visit Germany in early 1975. First, Alwin Schockemohle offered him a job.

“He would give me a car and a house and horses to ride plus more money than I could earn at home. Unbelievable! But I was not sure it was the right job. Paul Schockemohle then said ‘I will talk to my sponsor Dr Schnapka and if you are interested you can come and ride for him’. My ears perked up at that and I said yes. And that is how I moved to Germany.”

A broken collarbone for Paul Schockemohle at Weisbaden Show resulted in Eddie taking up the ride on Tpperary-bred Boomerang and thus began one of the greatest combinations in the history of world show jumping. Like Eddie and school, Boomerang hated the bit. He fitted him with a hackamore and away they went.

During the next five seasons, Eddie and Boomerang came first in more than 30 major Grand Prix events, won a record four consecutive Hickstead Derbies, came second in the European Championships at Vienna were second again at the 1978 World Championships in Aachen by quarter of a second and were part of the famous three–in–a row Aga Khan wins at Dublin.

Did Eddie have a feel for the reaction at home to his success? “No, I was just doing the best I could,” he says with wonderful honesty.

But he did get a taste of that reaction when he won the New York Grand Prix in 1976, “when I got back to the warm-up it was packed with Irish. People had tears in their eyes and I couldn’t believe the impact,” he says.

After Boomerang’s career-ending injury in 1980, Eddie scored some 15 more Grand Prix wins and was on a further 18 Aga Khan teams. But all that is for another time.

When I spoke to him at his new home in beautiful Whistler, west Canada, he was a happy contented 71-year-old looking out on the snow capped Coast Mountains. Asked about his retirement, he corrected me: “I do not look at it like that at all. I am still involved, just in a different mode as coach at the highest level of the sport.”

The magic lives on.