Shane Rose

Four months before the start of the Paris Olympics, equestrian Shane Rose was lying in a hospital bed with 19 different bone fractures, his Games dream in tatters.

Just days before, Shane, a three-time Olympic medallist in eventing, had confirmed his qualification for Paris, but a horrific training accident meant his chances of competing were severely compromised.

Shane was schooling a young horse over some jumps at his property in Werombi, southwest of Sydney, when it clipped a hurdle. Shane hit the ground first and the 550kg horse fell on top of him.

He was rushed to hospital and, along with a severe concussion, doctors found 19 separate fractures, including three in his elbow, four in his pelvis, six broken ribs and four near his spine. He also had surgery to insert a rod into his femur.

Despite the seriousness of his injuries, Shane never gave up on competing in Paris and within days he was working on a 100-day rehabilitation plan.
After a month restricted to bed and a wheelchair, Shane moved to Canberra to begin treatment at the Australian Institute of Sport.

Physios and trainers helped him slowly regain the strength to walk and ride.

“I have always been very positive – there were only two or three moments in my rehab when I thought, ‘What if I don’t get better?’ ” Shane told the Sydney Morning Herald. “But they were pretty short-lived, and literally the next day I thought, ‘No, I have got this’.”

After a month at the AIS, Shane was itching to get back on the horse.

“The first time I sat in the saddle, I pretended it didn’t hurt,” Shane said.

“I remember walking him the first five metres thinking, ‘Wow, I don’t know if I can do this’. It was one of those moments when I thought, ‘Maybe this is just going be too hard’.

“But literally 10 minutes later, I felt 100 per cent.  And we kept progressing, and pretty much I haven’t looked back from then. I have a bit of a limp, but riding, you wouldn’t know I’d had an accident. I feel 100 per cent on the horse.”

In early June, 85 days after his accident, Shane returned to competition, taking part in dressage and showjumping at the Melbourne international three-day event in Werribee. And a month later he was named in the Australian team for Paris.

Shane got his start in the sport at the age of five at the Forest Hills Pony Club in Sydney’s north. At 21, he made his international debut when he competed with horse Mr Joe Cool for Australia at the Young Riders Trans-Tasman competition in 1994.

He was selected to represent Australia in eventing at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta at 23-years-old. However, his horse went lame upon arrival in the United States, preventing him from going on to compete with the team that would eventually win gold. 

While equestrian is technically an individual sport, Shane – like all riders – is heavily reliant on the health of his horse. His mount All Luck, with whom he won a silver medal in the team event and placed 27th in the individual category in Beijing, suffered bouts of lameness after the Olympics.

Shane made it to London for the 2012 Olympic Games, but his horse Taurus, sustained a shoulder injury shortly after arrival in England, meaning that the pair were unable to compete.

Shane was a member of the Australian Olympic Team that competed at Rio 2016. He rode his horse, CP Qualified, and alongside Stuart Tinney, Sam Griffiths and Christopher Burton, took home a bronze medal in the team event.

At the postponed Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Shane added to his Olympic medal haul, winning a silver medal as part of the teams event alongside Andrew Hoy and Kevin McNab.

Partnering with the warmblood gelding Virgil, a horse with whom he shared a long and successful partnership, Shane finished the individual competition in 10th position.

Aside from his 2024 accident, Shane is no stranger to health battles and injuries. In 2001, he battled thyroid cancer, resulting in him having his thyroid removed. In 2003, he suffered a broken leg sustained during competition, forcing him to be hospitalised for three weeks. But he was back on horses less than a month after being discharged.

However, he was out of competition for four months in 2006. Shane suffered a devastating kick to the face from a horse, which left him in a medically induced coma for a week while he underwent multiple surgeries. 

So it is perhaps no surprise that Shane has hauled himself back into Olympic contention so quickly.

“No one is guaranteed of anything in this sport,” he said. “This might be my last chance of going to an Olympic Games, so I am doing everything in my powers to be there, and to do as well as I can at this one.”

Shane has three horses qualified for Paris but is most likely to ride his Tokyo mount Virgil.

Shane and Virgil have an incredible 15 FEI wins to their name, including the 2023 Adelaide Equestrian Festival. Fourth after the dressage at that event, their near-perfect cross country round saw them add just 0.4 of a time penalty to their score to end the second phase at the top of the leaderboard. At the showjumping on the final day, they had a rail in hand, but they didn’t need it. Jumping clear, they finished on an impressive 28.5 penalties.

In March 2024, Shane and Virgil won the Land Rover CCI4*-S individual crown and the Eventer of the Year title at the Oceania Eventing Challenge in Hamilton, New Zealand.