F EATURE LAURA COLLETT
riding because it took me out of my comfort zone”. HarryWhittington sent her horses, and when she moved to Salperton in 2018, the connection between trainer and event rider deepened. He sent Simply The Betts and Saint Calvados to her for jumping sessions, and in January 2020 decided to try sending Simply The Betts to Laura on the morning of his run at Cheltenham in the Timeform Novices’ Handicap Chase. It worked, the horse won – so he did the same with both Simply The Betts and Saint Calvados at The Festival™ in March that year. Simply The Betts strode up the hill to giveWhittington his first Festival triumph in the Brown Advisory & Merribelle Stable Plate, while Saint Calvados finished second, by a neck, in the Ryanair Chase. Job done. “It was an incredible thrill – knowing I had played a tiny part in two horses doing so well,” says Laura. The two horses are owned by Andrew and Kate Brooks, and they asked Olly Murphy to send a horse of theirs, Itchy Feet, to Laura for some jump schooling. “Then last summer, Olly rang up and asked, if he put in an all-weather arena, would I go to his every week and work with the horses on their jumping,” says Laura. Since September 2021 she has been at Olly’s Stratford-upon- Avon yard weekly, schooling from five to 12 horses each time. Some are youngsters from the Flat who need to learn all the basics; others need their jumping technique improving or have fallen or made mistakes in races. She also works with some of Kim Bailey’s horses – Laura uses his gallops to get her own event horses fit – and Kim has long been an advocate of using event riders to help polish his horses’ jumping games. She is a long-term Festival goer, and plans to be there on Tuesday,Wednesday and Friday “at least”. She has worked with Olly’s Stayers’ Hurdle hope Thomas Darby: “He’s a lovely horse, but a bit of a worrier and I’ve done a lot of gridwork with him to help his technique over a fence”, and she has taught the basics to a couple of Olly’s possible Triumph Hurdle runners, so will be watching them keenly. “As a sporting person, I can appreciate the magnitude of The Festival™ – what it means to everyone involved,” Laura says. “I’m lucky enough to have competed at an Olympics, and The Festival is the Olympics of Jump “Itwas an incredible thrill – knowing I had played a tinypart in two horses doing sowell”
racing; it’s the best of the best. The Betway Queen Mother Champion Chase is probably my favourite race to watch - the speed and the jumping makes it electric - but I will never forget, years ago, standing on the corner of the stand at floor-level when the Sky Bet Supreme novices’ hurdle started. The roar! It’s spine-tingling and creates the most amazing atmosphere for the week ahead.” If Cheltenham is Laura Collett’s local racecourse, then Blenheim International Horse Trials is her local ‘big event’. “Blenheim Palace is a venue and event which is extremely close to my heart,” she says. “I first rode there in the Pony Club showjumping competition, pigtails flying, as a child. It was the first big international horse trials I ever did, and I was over the moon to win the eight- and nine-year-old CCI4*-S, an incredibly prestigious class, on London 52 in 2018.” London 52 was her Tokyo gold medallist last year, and her long-term plan is to have horses competing in both the CCI4*-S and CCI4*-L divisions at The Jockey Club Blenheim International Horse Trials this year. “It’s fantastic to have The Jockey Club involved with eventing,” she says. “Looking at howwell they put on festivals like Cheltenham and the Grand National meeting, we know they can do things properly, and I am excited to see how they will move the sport of eventing forward and into the place I feel it needs to be in a modern age.”
48 THE F E S T I VAL TM PREV I EW MAGAZ I NE
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