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Sir Wattie: ‘He had a heart of gold and would always bust a gut for me’ *H&H Plus*

Martha Terry Martha Terry

    • This feisty horse with a “sense of humour” claimed two Badminton wins and two Olympic medals for Scotsman Ian Stark. Martha Terry charts his illustrious career and busy retirement

    IT was an ignominious start. Almost the first time Ian Stark sat on Sir Wattie, the four-year-old bucked so high that Ian was fired up into the rafters of the indoor school.

    “I was airborne, and it was just luck that the horse was still there when I came down again,” says Ian. “He had a sense of humour, that cockiness and slight arrogance, and I thought this horse would either be brilliant or useless.”

    Two Badminton wins, two silver Olympic medals and countless victories vindicate Ian’s first hunch. But when Wattie was a youngster, there was no guarantee it wouldn’t be the latter. Ian was at that time still working as a clerk for the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS), and the horse was being kept with his breeders, Dame Jean Maxwell-Scott and Susan Luczyc-Wyhowska, but he was a handful who needed plenty of regular work.

    This feature can also be read in Horse & Hound magazine, on sale date 24 June 2021

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    Martha Terry
    Martha Terry

    H&H features editor
    Martha is an experienced journalist who is mad-keen on horses and dogs. Her reporting CV includes the Paris Olympics, European championships, Aachen World Equestrian Festival and World Cup finals. After growing up with assorted liver and white springer spaniels, she enjoyed 14 years with two rescue dogs. Now, her constant companion is Fidget, an extremely energetic and habitually muddy black and white springer. Martha has written on topics as diverse as a top horse’s clone to the best GPS trackers for dogs, as well as equestrian and rural matters for Country Life, The Field, The Times, The Spectator and The Telegraph alongside Horse & Hound.
    Martha Terry