‘It’s a savage sport and I’ve been through the ringer’: how Bubby Upton turned a rocky start to the season around after three tough falls with the ‘most talented horse I’ve ever had’
A Bramham win and career-best result at five-star might look like a stellar season for Bubby Upton, but reflect a huge battle of self-confidence, the enduring faith of a tight-knit home team and her own belief in her “freak of nature” of a horse
“We call that redemption,” said Bubby Upton after finishing runner-up at Pau five-star with Its Cooley Time (Finn).
Redemption may seem a strange word for the brilliant grey who has won two Bramhams in the past 18 months, and his 27-year-old rider whose career path already looks set for stardom. But their Bramham double sandwiched three consecutive falls including at Pau a year ago, when coasting three fences from home.
“Last year I fully let him down and in my eyes prevented him winning his first five-star on his debut,” Bubby says. “It took a long time to swallow and get over that, but this year we’ve come back with a vengeance. This result is only scratching the surface of what we can do.”
Bubby is already a veteran of 16 five-star starts, but this is her best result so far – and sealed over one of the toughest Pau tracks, with only a 37% cross-country clear rate.
“He’s the most talented horse I’ve ever had, he’s a freak of nature,” says Bubby of the Quality Time TN gelding, who is owned by Susan de Zuleta, Jane Dear, Susie Holland-Bosworth, the Duchess of Norfolk, Hilary Russell and herself.
“He’s an incredible dressage horse – beautiful on the flat. He then goes cross-country as low and economical as you like, and then comes out and showjumps like a proper jumper. He’s the absolute dream for a rider.”
“A dream for a rider – he showjumps like a proper jumper”: Its Cooley Time goes clear on the final day at Pau five-star to finish runner-up
But for all that Bubby has always been sure of Finn’s talent, the falls buffeted her confidence that she could bring out the best in him.
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“It was hard at times, falling at the Europeans, then Pau, then Kronenberg, bang bang bang,” she says. “But the team behind me have never lost faith.”
Cue a phone call to cross-country maestros Andrew Nicholson and Chris Bartle.
“They have been instrumental, and really rallied round me in terms of analysing my rounds,” she says.
“They picked me up and held me together when I felt a bit lost in my way with Finn. Although he’s class through and through, his unusually high head carriage makes things quite difficult at times and he’s hyper sensitive.
“We stripped everything right back at the beginning of the season and now I feel I’ve got him nailed to a T. They’ve just taught me a different way with him and given me all the belief that I should have in him.”
Bubby explains that she’s grown up riding a different type of horse – winning multiple youth medals – and has had to tailor her approach.
“I have to ride him completely differently to all my other horses,” she says. “I’m quite a positive, attacking rider and because he’s as brave as a lion – nothing fazes him – that doesn’t really work with him. I have to be very precise at every single fence in terms of how I set him up and not take any fence for granted.
“You can’t just shake, rattle and roll like I can on Cola – he’s like a rocket ship or a Ferrari.”
“You can’t just shake, rattle and roll on him – he’s like a Ferrari”
BUBBY UPTON ON ITS COOLEY TIME
Bubby’s always been one for the minutiae, so it’s not just her riding style she’s tweaked for Finn.
“We've also changed his boots, his cross-country bit, little things like that, and it all just seems hopefully to have been the magic touch,” she says.
Finn now wears open-fronted tendon boots across country.
“You see him showjump and he’s so careful, but cross-country he’s so intelligent and knows exactly how low he can go, so this is just to help him respect the fences,” Bubby says.
“In the cross-country warm-up he’s mellow and goes quite high, but I can’t move him on because he’ll go out the start box like a rocket, so I just have to trust him.
“He’s the quickest animal on his feet, and he’s always like, ‘let me go! I know what I’m doing!’. But the feistier he is the better he is. I remember William Fox-Pitt saying that about Chilli Morning and Finn is the same: he’s a fighter.
“He just knows what’s going on. He knows the order of events and what’s coming next and it’s like he pumps himself up, just like I do. On cross-country morning he shakes!”
Bubby Upton at home with Its Cooley Time
Bubby pays huge tribute to her family and home team – including the horses – for their part in her success. Finn’s occasional blips pale into comparison with Bubby’s own resurgence since breaking her back in 2023.
“My family means everything, not just this season but my whole life,” she says. “I keep myself to myself and have my small close-knit team around me and they mean the world to me.
“It’s a savage sport at times, I’ve been through the ringer of it and they’ve been by my side all the time. The Pau result was for all of them, helping me never to lose faith.”
Bubby training Its Cooley Time at home – she’s been building a partnership with the now 11-year-old since he was five
There was just one nervy moment at Pau, when Bubby was pitched out of the saddle on landing over a triple brush into the water. Finn locked on to the next skinny and the pair galloped on as if nothing had happened – which Bubby puts down to a partnership forged when the horse was just five years old.
“That just shows the love and time we put into him, that he repays us in situations like that,” she says, stressing the importance of her connection with all horses.
“There was a moment in time when this was not possible for me anymore, and these horses are what got me back walking and riding again,” she says. “So that's probably why it’s quite evident how much I adore them. Because if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be here today.”
Runner-up at five-star may be the crowning result of the pair’s career so far, but they are absolutely not stopping here.
“I know Finn inside out now, and the second half of this season has been such confirmation that everything we are doing is spot-on,” she says. “I just can’t wait to see now what the next couple of years hold.”
Finishing the season on a high: Pau runner-up Bubby celebrates her best five-star result so far
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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.