'It's about guiding, not nagging'

As part of H€SH’s 140th anniversary this year, we are celebrating Britain's great horsey families with a series of interviews. We start by speaking to Olympic medallist Tina Cook, her mother Althea and daughter Isabelle

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We kicked off by discussing how each of their careers started… 
ALTHEA: My father had a farm and I hunted with three packs in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. I veered into showjumping when I left school because I just wanted to ride and I had two horses who were more showjumpers than eventers.

After a while, I missed cross-country. I had a grade A showjumper called Fanshaw, with whom I won showjumping junior individual bronze and team silver. I’d hunted him and I thought it’d be rather fun to event him. He sailed through a whole season from novice to advanced.

At that time, the British eventing team were very thin at the top. Colonel Frank Weldon wrote for The Telegraph so he’d seen me and Fanshaw jumping at Hickstead in the grade A class, so they fast-tracked me into the eventing team, which was a baptism of fire. I was only 20.

In those days, everybody was into crosscountry and as long as you could do well in that, dressage didn’t matter too much.

Then I got a young horse who was more of an eventer, Questionnaire. He was terribly brave and I was fairly ignorant I thought all he needed was a good season hunting. He was second at Burghley in 1967 as a six-year-old and I had a big offer for him. I asked the selectors if they were interested in him for the following year’s Olympics, but Colonel Moseley said he was too young and green, so I sold him. He went to the Olympics for Canada.

I did some more showjumping, then got married.