A rider who thought her boyfriend had bought her another horse when he involved her current showjumper in a marriage proposal instead joked that he still has the opportunity for the former.
Victoria Lundy’s boyfriend of five years Saul Hayden asked her to put a blindfold on and led her across the field, at Victoria’s family’s Croft Top Equestrian Centre in Lancashire. When Victoria removed the blindfold, Saul was down on one knee, and her “horse of a lifetime” Rolex II Van Berkenbroeck Z was standing next to him wearing a rug embroidered with the words “Will you marry me?”
“It took me a moment to realise!” Victoria told H&H. “I looked at the rug, and that made it more emotional, and he said ‘Well, will you’! And I said yes.”
Victoria said she had had no idea the proposal was in the pipeline, although she thought Saul and her sister Sarah had been acting strangely before last Thursday (26 June), when the couple had been due to go out for tea.
“The friends we were going with cancelled and he said ‘We’ll still go’, because he needed me off the farm!” she said. “Then we came back and he said ‘Put this blindfold on’. I wasn’t going to but he said ‘You know you needed another stable’, so I thought he had bought me another horse. He took me across the field; I was in heels, so I couldn’t walk properly, but it was my horse, with the rug on.”
(Image credit: creditUnknown)
Victoria said it was special it was Rolex involved; she bought him as a “fun horse”, before Covid but “He’s the best horse ever,” she said. The pair have won and been placed up to 1.30m, including at winter classic and county shows.
“He just loves the job,” she said. “He is a bit of a worrier, and he was staring as I was being dragged across the field, probably wondering what was happening, but he made it more special. I’d always said I wouldn’t have horses at a wedding – but I might have to now!”
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Victoria said the rug, which Saul asked a family friend to embroider, was the one Rolex wore at shows.
“I said to Saul I can’t use this at shows any more; I might just keep it at home,” she said. “Or maybe I will still take him in it, and see what people say! I have had a few people ask if I was secretly gutted Saul hadn’t bought me another horse – but he can come up with that another day!”
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Eleanor is an experienced journalist who spent over eight years working for local and national newspapers before joining H&H as news editor in March 2016. Passionate about equine welfare and exposing the truth, Eleanor has reported on all aspects of the industry, from Brexit to anti-bullying campaigns, and from dressage rules to mules. Her sport of choice is showjumping, in which she competes her own horses, and she also enjoys reporting at local jumping shows through to international championships.
