The Bronze medal winning Australian team, Andrew Hoy, Clayton Fredericks, Megan Jones and Sonja Johnson Photograph:Ilse Schwarz HorseSport USA

Clayton, riding Peta and Edwin McAuley’s talented 11-year-old Ben Along Time, kept his cool and left all the showjumping poles untouched, while the three riders ahead of him in the standings overnight knocked down rails.

The clear round moved the pair up from 4^th after yesterday’s cross-country to snare the coveted silver for themselves and help Australia to its first Eventing world championship medal in 20 years and its first ever WEG medal in the sport. 

“We found this horse [as a four-year-old] and we named him Ben Along Time. I thought it would be an appropriate name because I just had a gut feeling that this horse would be the one that would take me all the way,” Clayton said. “I thought ‘by the time I get this horse to the top it will have been a long time’ – let’s hope I end up saying it’s been a long time at the top.”

South Australia’s Megan Jones on her homebred Kirby Park Irish Jester, also one of the 14 riders to showjump clear, finished 16^th, while three-time Olympic gold medallist Andrew Hoy, riding Tom Attwood and Richard Constant’s Master Monarch, had one rail, which put him in 22^nd place. A bruised Sonja Johnson, who was knocked unconscious in a fall on the cross-country course yesterday, said “these guys have done a fair bit to improve my headache”. “They’ve done a great job so I was very lucky to be part of it – thanks guys for my medal.”

Two-time Olympic gold medallist Phillip Dutton, riding as an individual on Bruce Duchossois’s Connaught, had two rails down to finish 30^th.

Andrew, a key member of Australia’s back-to-back gold-medal-winning Olympic Eventing teams and individual silver medallist at Sydney, said it was great to break the WEG medal drought.

“The Olympics has been fantastic for us but world championships just haven’t worked for whatever reason,” Andrew said.

“I don’t think there’s a formula as to why it’s worked and why it hasn’t. We put in the same effort all the time and Wayne Roycroft, our team coach, and the management team have always worked equally as hard regardless of whether it’s a world championship or Olympic Games.

“It’s absolutely wonderful for us to break this jinx.” 

Germany took the team gold medal and Zara Phillips, part of the silver-medal-winning British team, was crowned individual world champion on Toy Town, with America’s Amy Tryon taking the bronze on Poggio.

Clayton last rode for Australia as an individual at the Open European championships in France in 1995. He came close again in 1996 but Bundaberg injured his leg in the final gallop before the squad flew out for the Atlanta Olympics. Then tragedy struck when his promising young horse Boundalong was put down in 2003 after breaking its leg in a road accident. 

“There’ve been a couple of times in my career when I’ve had it all in front of me and made a cock-up and everyone’s seen it. I’ve worked a lot on all aspects of my riding,” the 38-year-old said. “It’s just great to finally have a major team thing. It’s taken a long time but I think you appreciate it more that way. If suddenly you’re on the team as a young person maybe you don’t appreciate how hard it is to get there. I just feel I’ve got the tools now to do it.”

Clayton, who lives near Wiltshire in England, was 2005 World Cup champion and was recently crowned 2006 British Open Champion as well as winning Chatsworth CIC-W three-star in England and Saumur CCI three-star in France. 

His equine partner, Ben, “is a bit of a pony” in that he likes doughnuts and biscuits, and, evidently, crowds, as he proved today in front of 30,000 people.

“He’s just a show-off. He goes in that arena with all those people and just says ‘look at me’.”

But he also “can get quite excited about the whole affair’’ and with that in mind, Clayton jumped only six or so fences in his warm-up. He paid credit to Wayne and assistant coach Sam Lyle for trusting his feeling that he shouldn’t overdo it.

“It was probably hard for them to hold back and not say ‘we want to do more’,” Clayton said.

“But together we got him sorted and he jumped beautifully so I’m just really pleased.”

Clayton said Ben’s owners, the McAuleys, “have been so, so good”. “They’ve trusted me all the way, they’ve never, ever said ‘I want you to do this or I want you to do that’, they’ve let me run the horses, manage the horses, choose the horses and just provided the funds and the mental and emotional support. They’ve been brilliant like that, you couldn’t get better owners.” 

He also paid tribute to team farrier Sandy Parker’s “brilliant job” after Ben lost a shoe on the cross country, and to the Eventing team’s dressage trainer, Harry Boldt, who “was fantastic – he just watched and praised you for your good stuff, worked on the bits you were having trouble with and never tried to do too much”.

Clayton had “a burning desire to get on a horse” as a child growing up in Perth and together with his first horse, Teddy Bear, “a real fluff ball bought from a riding school”, went to Orange Grove Pony Club. He later did some showing and at 16 discovered cross-country when he entered a Pony Club Tetrathlon. With success at events in Victoria and WA, and “a pocketful of money” after selling a riding school he had set up in the showgrounds next to Flemington Racecourse, Clayton headed to the UK for a year. Just weeks before he was due to return, he met his future wife, ex-British eventer Lucinda Murray, who had lined up some teaching in New Zealand. He convinced her to go via Australia and the rest, as they say, is history. 

“All my mates were saying ‘You don’t want to be with this Pommie bird’ so I just thought well, we were going to go to Melbourne Three-Day Event and I thought ‘Well, we’ll drive across and it’ll either make our relationship or break our relationship. Three days driving across the Nullabor is a good test I reckon,” Clayton said.

Today was doubly sweet for the Fredericks as Spring Along, a horse Lucinda had produced up to Novice level, was a member of the silver-medal-winning British team with Daisy Dick.

About 800 athletes are competing at WEG, which runs until September 3, for the world champion titles in eventing, dressage, showjumping, four-in-hand driving, endurance, vaulting and reining. Australia is fielding 23 competitors across all disciplines except reining.

Eventing is an equestrian triathlon comprising dressage, cross country and jumping phases. The dressage test is a series of compulsory movements designed to assess the gaits, suppleness and obedience of the horse. The cross-country course tests its speed, endurance and courage over fixed obstacles. The final showjumping phase checks the horse’s suppleness and carefulness over lightweight coloured poles after the rigours of the previous day.