The lure of the saddle

When asked to describe in three words what it means to win Badminton, the world’s most challenging and prestigious equestrian event, Jonelle Price — this year’s victor and the first woman to take the title for a decade — knocked back a glass of champagne and answered: ‘Dreams. Come. True.’

For the past 20 years Jonelle has relied on dreams and phenomenal willpower to get to the top of the exclusive and very expensive sport of eventing. Hers has been a different route from the classic one of ‘Daddy bought me a pony’ (or in the case of her fellow competitor, Princess Anne’s daughter Zara Tindall, ‘Mummy’).

The child of suburban parents, Jonelle first sat on a horse as an eight-year-old. Her mother, a bookkeeper, is still terrified of them. Years of babysitting, waitressing and mowing lawns followed, to fund her riding career in New Zealand. Until she won team bronze at the London Olympics in her early thirties, she rode all day and worked three nights a week at a pizzeria, bringing home leftovers for Tim, her husband and Olympic team-mate. Jonelle’s title-winning ride earlier this month was 11 minutes and 50 seconds of glory ground out the hard way.

I watched her scorching over fences and ditches deep and wide enough to bury a truck in, and I felt not just admiration but envy. I sat sweating with excitement in front of my laptop as she navigated the course, stomach churning, praying the live online feed wouldn’t fail. You know you are watching the wrong sport when you find yourself asking what the point of it is. You know you are watching the right sport when you wonder what the point of everything else is.

An old fantasy began to resurrect itself.