Many of you may remember the foray with fame enjoyed in the 1990s by dreadlocked Londoner Oliver Skeete, who earned countless television appearances and print space on the back of his novel bid to showjump at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
A former motor mechanic, bouncer and footballer, Oliver only began riding aged 36 after “getting bored” watching his daughters learning at Ealing Riding School and was immediately hooked. He sold the family car to buy a horse and within a year had started showjumping competitively.
“My two daughters were five and eight and I took them to Ealing Riding School one summer,” Oliver Skeete tells H&H. “I was watching, getting bored, so I decided to have a go myself. The first horse I sat on nearly chucked me off, but I fell in love with it. Because I couldn’t do it – I really was useless – that’s what did it for me, I wanted to get better.”
Oliver bought his daughters a pony each and learned everything from mucking out to grooming.
“I then bought a cob called Odd Job – he was definitely PC Plod!” says Barbados-born Oliver. “But I learnt on him and my daughters carried on riding until they were teenagers.”
Soon Oliver had had enough of plodding around and instead wanted a horse “that would go forward” so he bought a thoroughbred.
“I was new to horses and I just got ripped off,” says Oliver. “I had him for a year but he was just too forward going – although he could jump, just not very well, and that gave me the bug.
“I went to Barry Fox for lessons and he took me to Ireland and we bought a horse from Paul Darragh called Betsy. She was only small but she could really jump – I paid about £15,000 for her. Barry started teaching me and, all this is within a year, I started going to shows, doing discovery classes – and falling off a lot!
“But I wasn’t happy because I was jumping the small classes while the kids were jumping the big classes – I wanted to be doing that.”
So Oliver jumped in his car and “followed the Whitakers, all over the country”.
“I was just watching them and learning,” he reveals of seeing brothers John and Michael in action.
Oliver Skeete: ‘It just went wild’
Next, Oliver moved his horse to the yard of showjumper Nigel Goddard and began training with him.
“Next thing I knew I was jumping newcomers and then it just went wild – but it wasn’t just my riding that was taking off, it was this novelty thing,” he explains. “People were watching – some were laughing, but some were taking me seriously and it was a journey. It just evolved.”
Oliver reveals that is was international showjumper Lionel Dunning who taught him “how to ride properly” on his assortment of horses including youngsters and novices.
At Jersey Horse of the Year Show, where Oliver won a class, he unexpectedly ended up jumping his first puissance.
“I met these travellers who were taking the Mickey and trying to sell me this scrawny little horse,” he remembers. “They said ‘Try it in a class and if you like it, you can buy it’. So I asked which class I should enter it in and they said the puissance!
“Well I did it – I didn’t win, but I winged it on a horse I’d never ridden before. I think it was just a matter of not being scared.”
Oliver had set his sights on reaching the top of the sport, but by this time he “was running out of money”.
“So I phoned up The Sun newspaper and asked if they wanted to sponsor me – they said no, but they did want to do a story on me and that’s when it all kicked off,” he recalls.
Oliver appeared on prime time chat shows, news programmes, he even made a documentary, while also becoming a familiar face in the showjumping ring. He went on to write his autobiography, Jumping the Odds: Memoirs of a Rastafarian Showjumper.
‘I decided to get away from it all’
While he didn’t make it to the top of the sport, he succeeded in taking showjumping to a much wider audience.
“I was clearing out the loft the other day and found all the magazines and newspapers I was in – I kept everything and met so many people,” Oliver says.
“I eventually stopped riding about 12 years ago – I was running a stables and after a run-in with another con lady I decided to get away from it all.”
Since hanging up his boots, Oliver Skeete has done some acting, making an appearance in James Bond film Die Another Day, and now runs a removal company, occasionally riding a friend’s horses.
Looking back at his time in the ring, Oliver says: “Don’t get me wrong, I was never the best rider in the world, but I just had this thing that I wanted to be a showjumper and all these really good boys like the Whitakers and Tim Stockdale gave me the encouragement I needed to do it.
“So I’m not riding as such now – I still enjoy it though, that will never go.
“I took my daughter, who is now 37, riding in Barbados recently – she hadn’t ridden for ages and she loved it. Sometimes we sit and watch the old videos together, they loved it all. I think they’re very proud of their old man.”
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Joe Trunkfield: ‘The challenge of being a showjumper versus a businessman’
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