by Bruce A. Roy
Did you see it? Could you believe it? Twenty-two Clydesdales playing American football. It actually happened in the Sawtooth Mountain Range in Idaho’s National Forest, where a Superbowl commercial for Budweiser beer was filmed.
This equine football match culminated two years planning by the ad agency responsible for marketing Anheuser Busch products. It was the result of a “crash course” of six months training for 26 Budweiser Clydesdales.
Training that included two 11-horse teams lining up and charging each other, which redefined the term “contact sport.” Kicking field goals, catching the ball and falling were all part of the training. The result was the 60-second commercial seen during the National Football League’s televised 2006 Superbowl.
Two Australian brothers, Robin and Noel Wiltshire, trained the Clydesdales. For the first two weeks, the horses were taught to rear and lay down, simulating catching the ball and being tackled. Countless hours were spent lining the horses up, facing each other, just as football players do in an actual game.
On a whistle from Robin, the horses would run at each other from opposite ends of the football field, then stop and line up, their noses only inches apart. With only two weeks of training, they all did remarkably well.
The director broke his arm before the filming began, in an awkward spill from one of the horses. He wanted close-ups of the rearing horses. The action would get so close, that on occasions he would tumble from his position over the camera and run for his life.
Frustrations ran high on occasion. The storyboard was often changed with Robin and Noel being the last ones to know. However, they were the first ones to deal with it. One of the assistant directors would not change his verbal signal for the action to begin.
The Clydesdales soon learned to “go” on the word “action” instead of waiting for Robin’s signal. This almost led to human injury on occasion, as the line-up of horses would charge when someone from the background whistled. However, no horse or human was injured.
When the filming was complete, everyone had become attached to the horses. Watching them perform was the highlight of each day. Conrad Hall was the cameraman. The winner of three academy awards, he shot “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
However, this was his first experience filming with a camera mounted on a horse’s rump. The camera was attached to a special harness by two buckles. When the camera horse was let loose, the 70mm camera was operated by remote control.
The horses seen in the commercial were all Clydesdales that Budweiser had purchased in the United States, Canada, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Bay geldings with four white legs and a white face, they all stood 18 to 19 hh.
Most every horse had been employed in one of Budweiser’s five Clydesdale eight-horse hitches, so they were easy to handle. All had a good eye and a great temperament.
They did Clydesdale breeders proud!
