Horse & Hound website editor's review of the year

What a busy and exciting year it has been for the Horse & Hound website — and it hasn’t finished yet! From winning four Equestrian Social Media Awards this spring, through the Olympics this summer and more recently the launch of our new online services, it really has been all go.

While professionally the year started on a high — who doesn’t like winning awards? — on a personal level thing were less rosy. My year started badly when my 11-year-old TB succumbed to chronic inflammatory bowel disease. I’ve never seen a horse in so much pain as he was that freezing cold February night. It made a difficult decision easy to make.

Having got life back to some level of normality, it started to rain… and rain… and rain. As the office debated where the next cancellation would be, my father started to lose his battle with cancer. I must have been the only person to breath a sigh of relief when Badminton was cancelled. I was terribly sorry for all the riders, tradestand holders and local businesses that missed out, but it meant I could be at my Dad’s side at the end without a panic dash back from Gloucestershire.

But life goes on, and with the Olympics on the horizon there was no time to mope around. Rumours that Greenwich might surrender to the weather proved baseless. The crowds descended, the Games Makers were extremely jolly and the British Olympic and Paralympic riders performed out of their skin. I was lucky enough to be in the stands for one of the early dressage days, and despite getting soaked through to the skin (quite literally – I was still wet after an hour long train journey home), I am delighted to be able to say, I was there!

The Games were a challenging period of intense work for us at H&H. I was mainly on the ‘late shift’ working into the evening to get our daily e-newsletter out, as well as running our H&H Live coverage on cross-country and kur day. Then it was off to Burghley for four more days of H&H Live, which is always great fun, before returning to the office to take stock and perhaps have a bit of a breather, I hoped.

Following hot on the heels of H&H Compare came the launch of our exciting new co-buying scheme, which brings our readers together to buy brilliant products at discount prices. As our first product sold out in just over an hour, we think we could be on to a winner. The IPC Editors’ Group certainly thought so as we won two consecutive bottles of Champagne for ‘Genuis idea of the month’. With a team the size of H&H that only amounts to a mouthful each, but I’ll take it.

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Carol is an experienced journalist and editor, who is also a passionate amateur rider and dedicated horse owner, having ridden since childhood. She has a particular interest in the emotional well-being and ethical training of horses, alongside veterinary matters, having garnered extensive first-hand experience of numerous equine health conditions through more than 30 years of horse ownership.