Boomerang

Like Hans Gunter Winkler's Halla, Eddie Macken's Boomerang was a horse in a lifetime. When he retired in 1980, his money winnings were in the region of a quarter of a million pounds, which at that time no other horse had achieved. To this day no one has equalled his record four consecutive victories in the British Jumping Derby at Hickstead, and he was, in addition, one of the most consistent Grand Prix horses of all…
As is so often the case, it was pure chance which brought Eddie Macken and Boomerang together.  Macken had ridden him as a youngster in Ireland and found him a difficult horse: he had mouth problems and a tendency to stop.

The County Tipperary-bred gelding, by the Thoroughbred stallion Battleburn, passed through several yards before Paul Schockemohle bought him for £15,000, a big sum in the seventies for a horse with his problems. It was during the mid-seventies, when Macken was based at Schockemohle's yard in Germany, that he came to be given the ride on Boomerang.

At that stage the gelding filled the role of Schockemohle's speed horse. Macken was responsible for schooling him, and his wife, Suzanne, did much to sweeten the horse's temperament by taking him out hacking away from the work environment.

Just before the Wiesbaden Show of 1975 Macken, who found himself without a good horse of his own, took over the ride on Boomerang thanks to Schockemohle, who told him to keep him 'until you get a better horse'. The new partnership won the Grand Prix at that show and for the next five years proved to be one of the hardest to beat on the international circuit.

The highlights of Boomerang's career included those four Hickstead Derby victories, in 1976, 1977, 1978 and 1979 (in 1976 and 1978 he jumped a clear round); a near miss in the 1978 World Championships, when Macken lost the change-horse final by only a quarter of a time fault, and in which Boomerang became only the third horse in the history of the championships to go clear with all four riders; and another near miss in the 1979 European Championships, when a controversial 4 faults at the water left him in fourth place.

Grand Prix wins included London, St Gallen, New York, La Baule, Brussels, Gothenburg, Nice, Rome, Aachen and Calgary.

Retired in 1980, he had to be put down on 20 May 1983 through ill-health and was buried at Eddie Macken's stud in Kells.

Boomerang's fame and popularity are well portrayed in a story related by a member of the equestrian press. Because of the horse's mouth problems, Eddie Macken habitually rode him in a hackamore, a bitless bridle. On one occasion at a big English show, when another horse came into the arena sporting an identical bridle, a young spectator was heard to say to her companion, 'Oh look, he's wearing a Boomerang!
View the original article here