Sports performance coach

Poppy Blandford on lessons in self-belief, preparing for the Olympics and why her niche job is becoming much more mainstream

- Jennifer Donald

I don’t come from a horsey family, but I started riding at the age of five and quickly got the bug. I got the taste for high-level sport while working for international showjumpers during my university holidays in Switzerland, US and Canada. So my background is showjumping, but I work across the disciplines now.

I wasn’t passionate about psychology at school, but I was drawn to working with people and I trained to be an occupational therapist, specialising in child and adolescent mental health. I realised I didn’t want to work in a hospital setting my whole life, so I took “early retirement” and did horses full-time for two years. I saw the need for psychology in the sport while working in the US and Canada.

Riders, managers, grooms and owners were naturally drawn to talking to me and asking for advice in a casual way because I was therapy-trained, so a good sounding board. I realised the equestrian world was not immune from the stresses of life, so that inspired me to try to combine the two.

The turning point came after I broke two vertebrae in a bad fall and had six months of thinking time. I realised I was not going to ride full-time anymore, so it was time to put these things together. I did a two-year masters in performance psychology and coaching, and I loved it from day one.