After Oliver Townend won the MARS Maryland 5-star Three-Day Event in 2024 with the magnificent Ballaghmor Class, the British rider said of the 17-year-old Irishbred gelding, “I wish he could carry on for another 10 years so we could retire together.”
When someone wondered if he would retire the horse from 5-star competition following his fourth win at that level, Oliver snapped, “Would you?” calling it “the most ridiculous question I’ve been asked all week.”
Oliver Townend and Ballaghmor Class at Maryland.
But that would turn out to be the last of the four 5-star wins from the clever, sensitive gray known as Thomas. At his final 5-star outing in 2025 at Germany’s Pau competition, the campaigner finished twenty-first. It was time to stop. His retirement was announced in January.
Now 19, Thomas will be the center of formal retirement ceremony next weekend at Britain’s 5-star Defender Burghley Horse Trials, an event he won in 2017 and 2023. His other 5-star victory was in the Defender Kentucky fixture in 2021, when because of Covid, the public was not in the stands, only photos of people.
Sadly, the stands were empty except for photographs of spectators at Kentucky in 2021.
That was, however, the year Oliver and Thomas hit another milestone, team gold at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
Although Oliver is one of eventing’s biggest winners, he is most closely identified with Thomas, who has not been ridden by anyone else in competition.
Oliver Townend was grateful to his final 5-star victory with Thomas in Maryland.
By the Holsteiner Courage II out of an Irish mare, Kilderry Place, Thomas is owned by Karyn Shuter (U.S. Eventing high performance adviser), Angela Hislop and Val Ryan.
But his name is inseparable from Oliver’s, and the two will continue to carry on together as the best of friends.