A colourful life

Stephanie Bateman catches up with riders of successful coloured horses – past and present – to find out if their achievements are more than skin deep

- Stephanie Bateman

THERE’S something striking in the white flashes of a coloured horse, and some certainly prove to be more than just pretty markings. In fact, if coloured horses can teach us anything, it’s never to judge a book by its colour, as Pippa Funnell found out early in her career.

“I was working for Ruth McMullen when I first saw skewbald gelding Bits And Pieces,” explains Pippa.

“He was a 15.3hh by successful Irish National Hunt stallion Lord Gale out of a coloured foster mare, and although he had quality, my first impression was that he’d make a nice Pony Club pony.”

While at Ruth’s, “Henry” was competed lightly before being bought by Pippa’s longstanding owners Sarah and Richard Jewson.

“I’d just moved down to William’s when Sarah rang me and asked me to take on Henry,” tells Pippa. “Sarah had sent me ‘freak’ horses before that had turned out to be brilliant and Henry had such a fantastic jump that I couldn’t say no.”

It just so happens that the plucky coloured was hugely instrumental in Pippa’s career.

“He was my first top-class horse and we had some really good results,” she says. “He found the dressage difficult, but he was the first horse to show me what a big four-star track should feel like, and he was the first horse to get me my Union Jack badge.”

His biggest accolades included winning Blenheim in 1995, finishing fourth at Burghley in 1996, and ninth at Badminton in 1997.

“I had a fall on him at Burghley in 1997, and then at Badminton the following year. He had just done his best-ever dressage and was going brilliantly cross-country before breaking down, and that was the end of his career.”