Other Sports: Equestrian-Hester rides with Fame, seventh horse for seven Games

LONDON (Reuters) – British dressage great Carl Hester is set to ride in his seventh, and possibly last, Olympics with a seventh different horse and a film of his life story waiting to be made once the Paris Games are out of the way.

Winner of team gold (2012), silver (2016) and bronze (2020) in an Olympic run that started in Barcelona in 1992, the 57-year-old will partner Fame, a 14-year-old stallion lent by 2016 silver medallist Fiona Bigwood.

If all goes well, Hester could go out at the top.

“He’s certainly one of my best horses that I’ve had in my career,” he told Reuters from his stables in Newent, in the west of England where previous Olympic winners Valegro and Uthopia are enjoying their retirement.

“He has a lot of quality, a lot of personality. He is a horse I actually can describe as loving his job.

“I know that sounds a bit cliched but literally every day that I have ridden that horse since he’s been here he comes out with a work ethic of 100% every single time, and he’s just an absolute pleasure to ride.

“If it is my last Games I couldn’t be happier to finish it on a horse like that because I don’t think — well, I say this every time — I probably wouldn’t find another one like that. He is very special.”

Whether or not the oldest member of the British team in Paris calls time on his Olympic career, after equalling show jumping compatriot Nick Skelton’s British record seven Games, remains to be seen.

He will be in his sixties by the time Los Angeles 2028 comes around but still younger than Australian eventer Andrew Hoy was when he took silver in 2021 at the age of 62 and way off Canadian show jumper Ian Millar’s 10 Games ending in 2012.

STORY WRITTEN

“I would like this to be my last Games if it goes well but of course you can’t say that,” said Hester, who won his gold with Uthopia, silver with Nip Tuck and bronze with En Vogue.

In 1992 he competed with Giorgione, in 2000 on Argentille Gullit and in 2004 on Exquis Escapado.

“I try to say nothing because I just think what happens if something goes wrong between now and then? I wouldn’t want my career to end like that.”

“I know that Fame will go back to Fiona after the Games anyway so although he might have another Olympics in him it won’t be with me.

“So again it’s that question of ‘will I find another one like that?’ I’ll just wait and get Paris out of the way and see how I feel.”

Whatever happens in France, against a background of the splendour of the Palace of Versailles, Hester’s story is written.

A script has been finished for a biopic charting his journey from a humble start on Sark, a tiny Channel Island with donkeys but no cars, to gold medal and mixing with the social elite as one of the world’s top dressage riders and trainers.

Producer Andrew Curtis told Variety last month that Hester’s story was akin to ‘Billy Elliot’, the 2000 movie about a working class boy growing up in a gritty mining community with a yearning for ballet.

Hester joked he would be happy, at this stage in his life, to be portrayed by George Clooney.

(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Ken Ferris)