The lure of the saddle

When asked to describe in three words what it means to win Badminton, the world’s most challenging and prestigious equestrian event, Jonelle Price — this year’s victor and the first woman to take the title for a decade — knocked back a glass of champagne and answered: ‘Dreams. Come. True.’

For the past 20 years Jonelle has relied on dreams and phenomenal willpower to get to the top of the exclusive and very expensive sport of eventing. Hers has been a different route from the classic one of ‘Daddy bought me a pony’ (or in the case of her fellow competitor, Princess Anne’s daughter Zara Tindall, ‘Mummy’).

The child of suburban parents, Jonelle first sat on a horse as an eight-year-old. Her mother, a bookkeeper, is still terrified of them. Years of babysitting, waitressing and mowing lawns followed, to fund her riding career in New Zealand. Until she won team bronze at the London Olympics in her early thirties, she rode all day and worked three nights a week at a pizzeria, bringing home leftovers for Tim, her husband and Olympic team-mate.