Lucy Jackson

The New Zealand event rider talks to Pippa Roome about selling her prospective Olympic mount, working with racehorses and fi nding balance in her life

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WHEN Lucy Jackson won the Event Rider Masters at Millstreet, Ireland, this autumn, she looked to be on the same pathway as plenty of other event riders — aiming for Tokyo with a smart young horse.

But after Millstreet, the 41-year-old New Zealand rider took the most difficult decision a rider can make: to sell her top horse. She was a 50% shareholder in Superstition II with loyal owners Gillian and Mark Greenlees and their daughter Charlotte, and the reward for giving up her Olympic dream was “a life-changing sum” of money.

“It was head versus heart — you know what you want to do and what you’re meant to do, but the two are not the same,” says Lucy, who has a two-year-old daughter, Evie, with her partner of five years, Harry Wallace.

“The horse wasn’t on the market, but the value of horses pre-Olympics came up in a throwaway conversation. I thought I’d better talk to the Greenlees. We both thought, ‘If that did happen, we’d probably be mad to say no,’ giggled and put the phone down. Three days later, we were approached.”

The offer came from Mandy Gray, an owner with Harry Meade, and Lucy knew “Stinky” would have a great home.

“I think minus Evie or Harry [Wallace], I might have thought longer and harder about saying no, because if it’s just you, you can go on not making much money,” she says.

“Millstreet was my first international win and it’s addictive, I loved winning. I genuinely think Stinky could have been in the top five at Badminton and gone to the Olympics. To say goodbye to that was agony, real agony.

“But horses are a very risky investment. They can go lame, I can fall off, I might not have been selected. It’s not definitely going to the Olympics or definitely have the money.