Ros Canter has spoken about combining motherhood and being a top athlete as she rides at Mars Badminton Horse Trials this week, trying to make history with Lordships Graffalo by becoming the first combination to win the event three times.
“I’m very, very happy I’m a mum again – I think that’s overriding everything in that I wouldn’t change my situation for anybody else’s at this moment in time,” said Ros as she led the dressage yesterday evening (8 May).
Ros gave birth to her second daughter, Seneh – named after a house at the Black Country Museum, which she and husband Chris McAleese took their first child Ziggy to visit last year – in late January.
Ros said that she’s very short of time this week because “any spare moment I get I’m feeding her and things like that which is actually great, I’m really enjoying it”. So while she talks to people about the course and so on, those conversations are aimed at gaining information to help her performance and she tries not to get too worried about what others are doing.
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“I’ve had two sports psychology sessions in the last few days, not really to learn anything new, but just to remind myself of the things I need to be a top performer at this level, in this environment,” Ros said.
“With my time being stretched, I’ve got to really utilise the bits of time I have by myself to use visualisation and all those sorts of things to make sure I’m in the right head space to compete.”
Ros Canter admitted she had “a little wobble” on arrival at Badminton Horse Trials on Tuesday.
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She said: “We were later arriving than we wanted to be, we realised we had no water in the lorry, everything got really late and I suddenly felt a bit sorry for myself and I thought, this isn’t fair, everyone else is the enjoying the fact they arrived three hours ago, it’s getting dark, we’ve got four dogs in the lorry. We were just all over the place.
“Then I gave myself a bit of a talking to and when I got into bed I thought, but you don’t want to be anywhere else, you wanted to have this baby and you’ve got her, so as far as I’m concerned I’m very lucky.”
Ros Canter and Lordships Graffalo go clear across country at Badminton 2026.
(Image credit: Peter Nixon)
Ros said Seneh is “a great distraction, sometimes she takes up too much of my time, but I wouldn’t change it for the world”.
“I’m thoroughly enjoying having her in our lives. Badminton is one week of the year and hopefully we have children to be part of our lives forever,” she said.
Ros said that she knows she hasn’t had the same preparation as other riders for this week, but she believes physically she is in good enough shape, although not the same shape as she has been previously.
“So my expectations are more realistic,” she said, going on to address the huge expectations around her and Lordships Graffalo, who have a superb record including two Badminton and two Burghley Horse Trials wins, a European title and an Olympic team gold medal.
“I’m also aware as a horse and rider, with two brains and everything else, that we’re not going to win every competition and at some point one of us is going to make a mistake.
“I’m not saying it would be a relief because it wouldn’t, but he is just a horse and I am just a rider so if I make a mistake or he makes a mistake, I will try to tell myself not to be too disappointed because that is life and it will happen one day. But I’ll be doing my best to prepare to stop that from happening tomorrow.”
Ros Canter on family at Badminton Horse Trials: “I gave Chris a good lecture”
At the public chat zone on Friday evening, third-placed Lara de Liedekerke-Meier talked about the fact she discusses the cross-country course with her husband, course-designer and former top-level rider Kai-Steffen Meier.
“I’d love to say that I have a husband to discuss my round with, but I know my discussion with my husband tomorrow would be how early he’s allowed to go to the beer tent and to remind him he has two children to look after while I concentrate on my job,” joked Ros.
“I gave Chris a good lecture last night about my expectations of him today and he actually behaved really well,” said Ros.
“I also gave myself a bit of a talking to – thinking about the fact that if it wasn’t quite the normal that I didn’t have a bit of time to focus, that maybe I was at a stage in my career where I shouldn’t get too worried about that, and I should pull on previous occasions where it’s gone right.
“So that was fine and I did have a bit less time today. But I wrote a plan last night so everyone in my team knew at what point they weren’t to come back to the lorry, because I wanted a little bit of time by myself this morning, just to get myself in the groove. And fortunately they listened.”
Tomorrow, Ros Canter will be the final rider to showjump as she bids to defend her title successfully and set a new Badminton Horse Trials record with the incomparable Lordships Graffalo.
Whether she wins or not, she’s certainly an inspiration for mothers and mothers-to-be everywhere.
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Pippa is a true eventing geek and has been H&H’s eventing editor since 2005. She has first-hand experience of competing up to British Eventing intermediate and international CCI2*-L level, and has worked in the industry on a top event yard. Pippa enjoys nothing more than immersing herself in the sport at the highest level, reporting from the five-stars and international championships, including the Olympics.
