Farewell to Britain's greatest

Valegro and Uthopia reshaped British dressage. With their passing, the sport says goodbye to two horses who gave us all far more than medals.

- Oscar Williams reports

UTHOPIA was never meant to be the star of anyone's yard. Dutch producer Ivonne Lawrence had gone to see a different horse when she spotted a small black three-yearold with a chewed tail watching her from the corner of a barn. He'd been sat on a handful of times, but the moment she rode him, his power was unmistakable.

"I've never felt a horse like it," Ivonne said. "He had so much suspension it was like a trampoline, and cantering him felt like shooting off to the moon."

Around the same time, a cobby bay colt, who'd go on to be the greatest dressage horse of all time, was not accepted at his KWPN stallion grading. Valegro didn't match the tall, modern type the judges wanted, but he caught Carl Hester's eye.

"I was staying with Anne and Gertjan van Olst in the Netherlands, and Anne suggested we go to watch the grading – I'd never experienced one before," recalls Carl.

"Gertjan had five or six young horses going through, one of which was Valegro. I couldn't take my eyes off him and his canter. He was quite small – he always had that chunkiness and strength about him, with the head of a duchess and the bottom of a cook.

"He wasn't accepted, so he went out with the others to be sold. When Anne and I went to see him afterwards, he had such a charming, grownup look about him."

Valegro wasn't expensive, and once he'd been gelded, he arrived at Carl's yard in Gloucestershire. But he didn't look like a future champion. He was small, strong and not the type Carl imagined himself riding at grand prix.

"I said to Anne, 'I'm going to bring him back, and we'll find him another home,'" Carl explained.