Chilli Morning Clone – Eventing World Champion

Chilli Morning was an extraordinary stallion, and now 4 years after his passing, his name is making headlines again through the fantastic performances of the Chilli morning clones.

The original Chilli Morning

Chilli Morning has been hailed as perhaps the most successful eventing stallions of all time, with numerous remarkable victories across the world. Ridden expertly by William Fox-Pitt, he notably came 12th at the Rio Olympics in 2016 and won the Badminton Horse Trials in 2015 – one of only two stallions to ever win a five-star horse trials. He has

He retired from competition after the Rio Olympics and returned to his owner’s home, where he lived out the rest of his days until he sadly passed away in August 2020.

However, a few years before his passing, his owners had made the decision to clone him. The cloning resulted in 3 identical clones to the original Chilli Morning, dubbed Deuce, Tres and Quattro. As all 3 of them were progressively backed and started competing in the same discipline as their original, they started garnering attention and producing some exciting results. They are now 7 years old, and a few weekends ago, on October 17th-20th, two of the clones were competing in the 7 year old Eventing World Championship at the Mondial du Lion in France.

The Chilli Morning Clones

Chilli Morning IV, aka Quattro, was ridden by Gemma Stevens for Great Britain and Chilli Morning II, aka Deuce, was ridden by Julia Krajewski for Germany. Both riders have a lot of experience on the eventing circuit, having each represented their country in the 2016 Rio Olympics and won a myriad of titles before and since.

Incredibly, after the first event of the week-end – the dressage, both pairs were awarded the exact same score of 26.2, positioning them respectively in 2^nd and ^3rd place on the provisional ranking!

After a weekend of phenomenal performances, Gemma Stevens took the lead with a perfect score in both the cross-country and showjumping, and finished in 1^st place. Quattro and Gemma Stevens were officially awarded the title of 7 year old Eventing World Champions and are no doubt looking forward to many more exciting competitions together. Julia Krajewski and Deuce on the other hand, finished 6^th at the end of the weekend – making for a very exciting headline of having two identical clones of the same horse in the top 10 leaderboard of such an impressive event!

The team at Gemini Genetics followed their performances closely over the course of the weekend and are thrilled to have witnessed this fabulous event! We wish both riders and horses all the best of luck in the continuation of their careers and we are looking forward to seeing many more exciting results from all of them!

The third Chilli Morning clone, Tres, is currently being ridden by Chinese Olympic Eventing Rider, Alex Hua Tian with whom he is delivering exciting performances. Hopefully we will soon see all three of them compete against each other!

All three Chilli Morning clones were cloned from skin samples obtained from the original horse. The skin samples were then processed and cultured to produce viable fibroblast cells that could be used for successful cloning.

To learn more about horse cloning with Gemini Genetics, head to https://www.geminigenetics.com/horse-cloning/ or contact us with any questions you might have!