Among the hopefuls lining up at the LeMieux Grassroots Championships at Badminton next week (6-7 May) will be a husband and wife going head to head – with just one other competitor on course between them.
Mary and Oliver Lofthouse have qualified Kilrainey Queen (Sandra) and Amicitia (Spot) respectively for the BE100 final. It will be a first for Mary, who evented up to four-star level before she had her three children. But Oliver and Spot are veterans, having contested the 100 and 90cm finals on multiple occasions.
Asked if there will be some rivalry, Mary said: “Definitely!
“Oliver doesn’t get a lot of time during the week to ride his horse, it’s my and my staff doing the majority of the fittening and he only gets to jump on at weekends. So if it goes well he gets the credit and if it goes wrong, I get the blame!”
Mary runs Lofthouse Eventing, a competition, sales and rehab yard in Cheshire. She had always evented, but Oliver competed in showing.
“Then he met me, and I think it was a case of, if you can’t beat them, join them,” she said. “He’s actually the crash test dummy, so anything new that’s challenging or big or strong, he tends to get plonked on, and he really enjoys getting on a variety of horses and figuring them out quite quickly.”
Mary explained that Spot came in to sell, 11 years ago, and was bought by her livery Sue Dickinson. The plan was for Mary to event him but “I promptly got pregnant, so Oliver took over the ride and qualified him for Badminton within his first three events”. Spot is now 17 and the partnership is still going strong.
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Mary said she bought Sandra as a four-year-old, four years ago, to bring on and sell.
“But she had to have kissing spines surgery, so she suddenly became worthless to everyone else, but was actually a really nice horse,” she said. “So we decided quite early on, she was worth more to us than she was to anyone else. And everything happens for a reason, because she’s been such a nice horse to get me going again after the children. She’s just so genuine; it doesn’t matter what mood you’re in, she comes out of the start box and just says ‘I’m doing this’, and off she goes. She’s been lovely.”
Oliver and Spot qualified first, by finishing third in the regional championships in September, then Mary found out in November that she and Sandra’s eighth-place finish on 35.5 had also secured them a place.
“It was really exciting because every year I’ve gone and walked round with him and thought, ‘It’s not fair he gets to go round and I never do’,” Mary said. “Although I’ve always enjoyed going and watching and helping, all I’ve ever done is gone and walked the course with Oliver and trained him and told him what to do!
“I never thought I’d get to go; because I’d ridden at four-star, obviously I was above intermediate level so I was out of it for years. I thought I’d never get to go to the smaller one, then I thought, well, actually, now I’m never going to get to the bigger one, because now I’ve had children and not riding at that level any more. And then finally, my qualification dropped off a few years ago, and I managed to qualify.”
Badminton will be a real family affair; the children, Mary’s parents and Spot’s owner Sue will all be there cheering them on.
“They’ve put us with only one horse between us, so we’ll be following each other round,” Mary said. “It’s the wrong way round, as I usually go at Driving Miss Daisy speed! But maybe I should try to catch him up. It’s very exciting.”
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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.
