‘I fell for King William instantly’: how love at first sight for Mary King grew into one of the greatest eventing partnerships of all time
As we await this month’s European Eventing Championships, we look back at the career of three-time European medallist King William. Mary King’s 1992 Badminton victor won two European team golds, plus individual bronze, world team gold, contested two Olympics and garnered celebrity status with his distinctive blaze and flair across country. Madeleine Silver charts his success
Postmen in Mary King’s Devon village became accustomed in the 1990s to fielding letters addressed to her legendary eventer: “King William, Devon”.
“I suppose there weren’t any other King Williams,” laughs Mary, 30 years on.
The fan mail had started after Mary and the 17hh gelding had won Gatcombe in 1991 and by the following year, hundreds of letters were arriving at the yard. With his prominent blaze, alert demeanour and increasingly consistent one-day-event record, he was easy to recognise.
“Even my mother, who was unhorsey, could always tell which one William was,” remembers Mary.
Eventer King William: the early days
When Mary was told that an exciting five-year-old was coming up for sale at Bernice Strong’s yard near Newbury, she leapt in her car and drove there immediately, “knowing how hard it is to find good young horses”, she says.
Badminton final scores
“As soon as I saw William, I absolutely fell for him. He came out of the stable with his head held high with his big white blaze; I could tell he was a natural athlete. But when I looked at him more carefully, I could see he had poor lower-limb conformation; he was quite pigeon-toed, slightly tied in below the knee and had curbed hocks.
“I thought he was a lovely horse, but thought, ‘Surely I can’t buy a horse with these sorts of conformational faults?’
“I remember being quite embarrassed phoning the former British team vet Peter Scott-Dunn to come and vet him. But he felt the same as me, that as he was so athletic and light on the ground, it was worth taking the risk.”
But it was in the biblical rain and mud at Badminton in 1992 that his celebrity status was cemented. Arriving in the 10-minute box, 38th to go, Mark Phillips delivered Mary the news that no one had yet gone clear and as she set off, she found herself praying: “Please God, look after William.”
But with Mark’s advice ringing in her ears to kick on and ignore the mud, they rode the first clear of the day. And after painstakingly rubbing nearly every showjump on the final day – but knocking down just one – Mary took the Badminton title for the first time; a childhood dream realised at the age of 30.
“Winning Badminton is in a league of its own; it’s like a jockey winning the Grand National – virtually everyone in the world has heard of this occasion, and it’s your big, famous moment,” wrote Mary in her 2009 autobiography.
As adoring crowds and press descended on the pair – “there wasn’t such health and safety then, there were people clambering over him wanting to touch him”, says Mary – they tried to make a quick exit.
“We drove out of Badminton thinking he’ll calm himself down, but as we were coming back down the M5, he was absolutely turning himself inside out,” remembers Mary’s former groom Annie Corbin.
Mary, following in a car behind with David King, whom she would later marry, spotted the lorry pulled over in the pouring rain in a service station and persuaded David to reverse up the slip road to be with them. The rest of the journey was spent with Annie in the back of the lorry scratching his neck until they arrived safely home – it was a reminder that for all his courage and flair across country, William was a sensitive soul.
Showjumping demons – and a split skirt
The heroic victory secured the pair a place on the team for the Barcelona Olympics that summer, a chance to rewrite their debut team performance at the European Championships in Punchestown the year before, where Mary had felt the “hollow victory” of winning a team gold when the pair had retired before the showjumping following a fall in the water.
But in Barcelona, a promising start for the British team began unravelling with Richard Walker falling, Ian Stark’s Murphy Himself igniting an old injury and William having a “humiliating” six fences down in the final phase, dropping Mary to ninth place and the team to sixth.
The press pounced on the team’s failure to secure a medal, with H&H’s former editor Michael Clayton slating the team as being “hypnotised by their own cleverness” having led after dressage, and Mary coming under fire for patting William as he left the arena even though he’d flattened the fences.
It was becoming clear that showjumping on the biggest stages, when crowds peered down from tiered seating and photographers loomed, was thwarting William’s potential medal haul. Even William’s owner Gill Robinson admits to having had to close her eyes on occasion when he was in the final phase (although she “didn’t mind if he had three down or six down, as long as he was OK”, she says. “He was just such a lovely horse.”).
Mary found herself bombarded with advice – including from a woman who offered to cast a spell on him – but eventually it was Lars Sederholm who was able to tweak Mary’s position, encouraging her to keep her weight back and instilling confidence in William.
By the time the World Equestrian Games came around in 1994, the narrative had changed for British eventing. An exposing moment in the trot-up when Mary’s team uniform of a narrow brown linen skirt split up to her hip, as she tried to keep up with William’s elaborate trot, fortunately didn’t set the tone for the championships; the all-female team of Mary, Karen Dixon, Tina Cook and Charlotte Bathe were hailed as heroines as they returned with a gold medal from the Hague.
A special trust – and an individual medal
Having married David in 1995 (with William in attendance at the reception), Mary was five-and-a-half months pregnant with her daughter Emily by the time of the European Championships in Italy that October, and she was stealthily letting out the buttons on her team jacket. Only her mother, groom Annie and the team doctor Michael Dooley were in on the secret, but it was William’s track record across country that convinced her she was making the right decision.
“He was so brave, bold and smooth across country,” she says. “If I’d been on any other slightly more difficult horse, I know my brain would have told me not to do it.”
It was here that she won her first individual medal, a bronze, as well as the team gold after another unnerving showjumping round where William knocked two of the three fences he had in hand.
While the press speculated that motherhood would mark the winding down of Mary’s career, she was looking ahead to the Atlanta Olympics, with Emily’s January arrival expertly planned to allow Mary to be in the running for selection. Riding as an individual, there was an element of relief that the team wouldn’t be relying on William’s showjumping.
But after a dressage test that reduced Annie to tears of pride and the late Dr Reiner Klimke to remark: “That was real dressage,” William and Mary had an uncharacteristic stop on the cross-country and an uncomfortable showjumping round hitting eight fences, meaning they finished in 12th place.
William arrived home full of energy nonetheless and winning the British Open Championships at Gatcombe that year was a consolation for the Atlanta disappointment. And it wasn’t until three years later, when Mary felt his gallop change halfway round the course at Blenheim in the autumn of 1999 that she made the decision to retire him, aged 16.
“He was still happy to jump, but I pulled him up. It was a tell-tale sign that he’d done enough,” says Mary, with William going to Annie in retirement.
Looking back, it was the “boundless energy” that Mary remembers so fondly about William, who was put down aged 19 in 2002 after suffering a pastern injury.
“He was an incredibly sound, tough and powerful horse,” she says. “He’d gallop around Badminton long-format and you honestly felt like he could just do it again, he had such natural energy and stamina.”
While adrenaline might have raced through his blood in the electric atmosphere at championships, at home he was the ultimate gentleman.
“I have a photograph of Emily when she was about 18 months old sitting there with him lying down in the stable,” remembers his owner, Gill Robinson. “Emily was touching his face and he was just looking after her. I’ve never seen a horse do that, but we all trusted William. He was just such a kind horse.”
Eventer King William’s crowning moments
17hh bay gelding by Nickel King (dam unknown), born 1983
- 1991: team gold at the European Championships, Punchestown
- 1992: won Badminton and individual 9th and team 6th at the Barcelona Olympic Games
- 1994: team gold and individual fourth at the World Equestrian Games in the Hague
- 1995: team gold and individual bronze at the European Championships, Pratoni del Vivaro
- 1996: individual 12th at the Atlanta Olympic Games
The groom’s perspective: “He had Badminton written all over him”
“When the lorry rocked up on the day that he arrived and they opened up the back, there was this horse that looked like a giraffe coming out the back,” remembers Mary’s former groom, Annie Corbin. “My first thought was, ‘How am I going to get a saddle on that?’ because he was so big and tall. But from the word go, he was the handsome one on the yard.
“As a baby, he had to be the first out and about, he didn’t like hanging around. And he always wanted to know where his neighbour was; we had to be a bit careful not to leave him on his own too much and to make sure he had a friend that he could see.
“From a groom’s point of view, he was quite high maintenance because you had to be conscious of that. I was always working out when the neighbours were taking their horses out because then I’d take him grazing. I used to take a book with me to events and I would go off grazing for hours with William.
“When he proved himself and won Badminton in that awful mud, I was so proud of him. They hadn’t had any clears and as he was about to go out on the course, I wanted to say, ‘Don’t go’, but I knew I couldn’t say that. He always had Badminton written all over him. He just flew across country; it was his thing. He loved working.
“And he made me think outside the box as a groom – about the noise, who was beside him, if there was going to be a parade. I had to be ready. But he gave a lot back. He was always very grateful and he definitely knew my voice. He was very true to me.”
The team-mate’s view: “I was in awe”
“At that stage in my career, in my twenties, I was very much in awe of Mary and King William,” remembers Tina Cook, who rode on a team with the pair at the 1994 World Equestrian Games and 1995 European Championships.
“He was a big, rangy horse who was quite imposing to look at. He was workmanlike, but sensitive and kind.
“I remember thinking what an amazing partnership they had – how Mary had so much belief in her horses and they had in her. I looked up to her and thought she made it all look so easy, even though the showjumping was obviously William’s weakest phase.
“But I was very young – it was a whirlwind going straight from young riders into seniors – and in that situation I was just overwhelmed and in awe to be there with them.”
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A graduate from Durham University, Madeleine joined H&H in 2011 and became Features Editor — producing content across the magazine and website, including the popular inside back cover article ‘The horse that made me’ and the weekly ‘The best of my fun…’ interview. She has written on topics as diverse as hay making and headcams, to hot totty in the horse world and circus horses. Madeleine now works as a freelance feature writer for Country Life, The Telegraph, Horse & Hound, cntraveller.com, The Spectator and The Field, as well as writing obituaries for The Times.