Sadie Smith

Dressage’s rising star talks to Oscar Williams about rebuilding her career, coping with setbacks and the people who made it all possible

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BEFORE I spoke to Sadie Smith, I talked to some of the people closest to her, and every single one lit up at the mention of her name. Carl Hester, for whom she worked for five and a half years, calls her one of the hardest workers he's ever met.

It feels like there's this groundswell of belief in the sport that she's on track for something big. But that belief hasn't always come from within.

“I've always struggled with self-belief,” Sadie, 35, admits. “Don’t get me wrong, I want to do well and I love winning, but I've never been someone who talks myself up.”

She says riding her “one in a million” mare, Swanmore Dantina (Dia) – who helped earn her a first senior call-up at the Rotterdam Nations Cup - has given her confidence. But others saw her potential long before that: like Charlotte Dujardin, who helped her get to Carl’s yard, and Carl himself, who encouraged her to enter Addington CDI this spring, which led to her team debut in Rotterdam.

“I wanted to do the Premier League classes, but I couldn't make it to the grand prix,” Sadie says. “I didn’t think I was good enough for the international classes, but Carl said, ‘For goodness’ sake, Sadie, how do you ever expect to get picked for anything if you don’t give it a go?’”

It was also Carl who encouraged her to take the leap and train abroad with the Van Olsts in the Netherlands, which is where Sadie was when Horse & Hound last interviewed her in 2021.

“I was gutted to leave home, I remember I cried a lot,” she says. “But I know it was the right thing to do. There were fewer horses for me to ride at the time, and I knew there was no one else in the UK I'd rather work for. Carl just gave me the nudge I needed to give it a go.”

Although the move was perfect on paper - and Sadie did get much more riding - she struggled with homesickness.