Tears, tattoos and a 40-year wait: how the national champion completed her second 160km ride
The reigning national endurance champion tells Martha Terry about the full-circle moment of completing her second 160km ride, her sport’s unique camaraderie and what makes a horse a winner, in this exclusive article for H&H subscribers
Endurance rider Emma Martin was 12 years old when she completed her first 160km ride. Nearly 40 years on, last season she bagged her second – and with it the title of national champion.
As Emma and two other top endurance riders, Amie Grainger and Victoria Davies, were tackling the final loop of the 160km, she admits fighting back the tears. After some 14 hours in the saddle, when the enormity of their imminent achievement began to soak in, they laughed, cried and discussed getting tattoos to mark the moment.
Just as she had as a determined 12-year-old – the youngest rider on the smallest horse – in 2025 Emma had set her sights on the 160km goal. One-day rides at this maximum distance are rare in the UK – maybe just one or two a season. So Emma clubbed together with Amie and Victoria to request the ride to be put on, at Thetford.
“The three of us rode round together, vetted together and finished together,” Emma says. “To achieve 100% success round a 160km is almost unheard of. There were tears – it was such a sense of relief and achievement.
“We talked all the time, except on the last loop when we were all trying not to cry. You remember the little things, like a pig running towards us and getting zapped by an electric fence. We talked about getting tattoos, but I’m quite glad that’s gone quiet as I don’t like pain!
“Winning the national title wasn’t really a goal,” she muses. “I’d set out to do the 160km and then realised with those points that I was in with a chance. I did 10 rides, and completed every one, so I had an inkling that the title could be a possibility.”
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Emma Martin: ‘A top endurance horse needs attitude’
Back in 1986, Emma Martin was a budding little endurance rider with a plucky 12.1hh, Sandpiper, a roan “Heinz 57 with some Welsh”. This was a pony who could turn his hoof to any discipline and was certainly a match for his bigger counterparts.
In 2025, she rode her mother Julie’s Nightfire Hallelujah Louis, a grey Arab, bred, built and trained for the job.
“My mum took a back seat to crew, and Louis and I got going together,” says Emma.
“We’ve had him since he was an unbroken five-year-old and he’s always had attitude. He’s very sharp out hacking, he shies, spooks and bucks, but at competitions he’s completely focused, like he knows his job and just does it. His attitude is his best attribute; they need it to get to the top.”
She lays the endurance drive firmly at Julie’s feet.
“I caught the bug from her early on and it’s never gone,” Emma says. “She’s won national championships and was very competitive. She’s still stewarding, volunteering, crewing for me and doing pleasure rides – so it’s in the blood.”
The ultimate distance ride may not have been on the agenda in the intervening decades, but Emma has never really stepped away from the sport. She’s evented, done dressage, hunting with bloodhounds, “a bit of everything”, but her heart has always been in endurance.
“It’s addictive,” she says. “Even if I have time out, I always come back to endurance. I love the length of time you spend with the horse, that partnership, and also the camaraderie with other riders, the preparation and the training.
“You get camaraderie in all horse sports, but I’ve never experienced anything like endurance.”
Training smarter, not longer
Endurance riding puts very different demands on horses – and riders – than the likes of showjumping and dressage. However, like many competitors across the disciplines, Emma has a full-time job and has to fit training and caring for her two horses around that. She counters the suggestion that endurance horses need endless mileage.
“You don’t have to do as much training as you might think, especially once you’ve got to a certain level, it’s more a case of keeping them ticking over,” she says.
“The longest ride I’d do would be about three hours at the start of the season, with a lot of walking. I like to do different types of training – polework, hacking, lungeing, hillwork – it’s not all time in the saddle. And I don’t do much on the roads because of the concussion.
“It’s not just about long rides, it’s knowing when to give a rest or put your foot on the gas. It helps that I’ve done it since I was tiny – it’s natural to me, listening to the horse, knowing when they need more or less.
“We’d start with a low-level ride early in the season, of about 40–60km, to check out how the horse is, then up to an 80km. Each ride brings them on.”
Yorkshire-based Emma juggles this with her job as a probation officer in Wakefield prison, doing condensed hours over four days, with one day working from home.
“Three days a week I am in prison, working with prisoners helping them progress through their sentences – I’ve been qualified since 2004 and I really enjoy it.
“My mum and I share the care of the horses, and she helps with the schooling and lungeing,” Emma explains. “As well as Louis, I have an eight-year-old, Vlacq Mr Pizzaz (Zaz), who is part Arab, thoroughbred and British Riding Pony.”
Zaz stepped up to open level last season – meaning he can now do 80km rides – but whether he’ll eventually step into Louis’ shoes is still up in the air.
“It’s an extra-special thing to be a 160km horse,” says Emma. “A horse might happily do 80s or multi-day rides, but to do a 160km one-day asks a lot of the horse and your relationship – that’s why I’ve only done it twice.”
Buying a potential endurance horse is a gamble, Emma explains, because you simply don’t know whether they have what it takes.
“Louis has very good conformation – they need to be so sound, with straight action, to get through the vettings,” she says. “You’re going on soundness, because you can’t really tell their attitude, so you are taking a punt. Mum likes a short pastern, and we’d usually go for Arab, whether part or pure.
“Paces are important, because you want something comfortable,” she adds, “but I must be able to adapt as I’ve ridden so many different types. The majority of horses can do the sport up to a level. Training helps, but a low resting heart rate is something you can’t always control.”
‘Vets, crews, rivals – we’re all helping each other’
Speaking of heart rates and soundness, the bucolic rides Emma describes around the hills, vales and forests of Britain seem a world away from the gruelling tests of international endurance in the desert, which have been under the welfare spotlight.
Emma highlights just how rigorous the vettings are across the board.
“Not many sports have a vet assessing you constantly while you’re competing,” she says. “The vets are working with you, giving advice and monitoring the horses’ welfare. And they’re really strict.
“At the end of every loop, if you have a problem you can be eliminated – it helps if your horse has a straight, sound action. Then they check the respiration, mucous membranes, gut sounds, for dehydration and that the heart rate is below 64bpm.”
Besides the vets and crews working alongside the rider, Emma insists, “we’re all helping each other” – and that includes rivals.
“At Red Dragon, the crew of the guy who was closest to me in the national rankings hadn’t managed to get to a certain checkpoint, so my crew crewed his horse,” she says unpretentiously. “We share knowledge and experience, look out for each other and ask for help.
“Endurance is amazing, and anyone can do it,” she adds. “A sense of direction and ability to read a map is handy, but I’d say any horse and competent rider can do it… although maybe not a 160km.”
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Martha is an experienced journalist who is mad-keen on horses and dogs. Her reporting CV includes the Paris Olympics, European championships, Aachen World Equestrian Festival and World Cup finals. After growing up with assorted liver and white springer spaniels, she enjoyed 14 years with two rescue dogs. Now, her constant companion is Fidget, an extremely energetic and habitually muddy black and white springer. Martha has written on topics as diverse as a top horse’s clone to the best GPS trackers for dogs, as well as equestrian and rural matters for Country Life, The Field, The Times, The Spectator and The Telegraph alongside Horse & Hound.