Victoria Pendleton: ‘Imagine if I’d felt as excited about cycling as I do about horses’
The 37-year-old Olympic cyclist-turned amateur jockey Victoria Pendleton featured in The Sunday Times Magazine’s long-standing ‘A Life in the Day’ series in yesterday’s edition (7 January 2017), revealing her complicated relationship with cycling — and why horses bring out the best in her.
Having won gold at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and at the 2012 London Games, she retired from professional cycling and instead turned her efforts to race riding, having never sat on a horse before.
She proved the doubters wrong when she finished fifth in the St James’ Place Foxhunter Chase at Cheltenham in March 2016, and now keeps two horses at livery — a chestnut mare called According To Sarah and a black gelding, Vesper.
“I spend the morning either schooling the horses or hacking them out. I’ll get them in [from] the field, groom them, tack them up, go for a ride, come back and wash them off. It feels really naughty and indulgent — I need to get a real job — but being around the horses is heaven,” she told The Sunday Times.
“I knew as soon as I started riding lessons in 2015 that that was it. I wish I’d started earlier, but I was kind of busy. When I jump and land well, I feel like I’ve eaten all the sweets in the sweet shop — I feel giddy-sick. But it makes me sad in some ways. Imagine if I had felt that excited about cycling?”
Continued below…
Olympic cyclist Victoria Pendleton wins her first race as a jockey
Olympic cyclist Victoria Pendleton secures her first victory in a hunter chase
Never miss out on the latest happenings in the equestrian world
Victoria has talked extensively in the past about the pressure of cycling at Olympic level.
“With the Olympics, winning a medal was very much expected. I went to Beijing and London knowing that I had a very good chance of winning. It was for me to lose, almost, but Cheltenham was wide open. I had just hoped to finish on the horse,” she said.
“It’s been a life of wearing different helmets. I worked hard at cycling, but it always felt like a stepping stone to the next thing. Back then, I dreamt of being chased, I was always running. I don’t dream so much now. When I have a couple of days away from the livery [yard], I dream about riding the horses.”
For all the latest equestrian news and reports, don’t miss Horse & Hound magazine, out every Thursday
Stay in touch with all the news in the run-up to and throughout the major shows and events during 2026 and beyond with a Horse & Hound subscription. Subscribe today for all you need to know ahead of these major events, plus online reports on the action as it happens from our expert team of reporters and in-depth analysis in our special commemorative magazines. Have a subscription already? Set up your unlimited website access now
A graduate from Durham University, Madeleine joined H&H in 2011 and became Features Editor — producing content across the magazine and website, including the popular inside back cover article ‘The horse that made me’ and the weekly ‘The best of my fun…’ interview. She has written on topics as diverse as hay making and headcams, to hot totty in the horse world and circus horses. Madeleine now works as a freelance feature writer for Country Life, The Telegraph, Horse & Hound, cntraveller.com, The Spectator and The Field, as well as writing obituaries for The Times.