Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
When he stops, I’ll stop
Nick Skelton, up for Sports Personality of the Year tomorrow, on winning Olympic gold at 58 – and why he’ll never sell his £12 million horse Big Star
Olympic show jumping champion Nick Skelton has a motto: get up and get going. Although, he concedes, at 58 years old the getting up bit takes rather longer than it once did. ‘ With the injuries I’ve had there are a few more aches and pains in the mornings,’ he says with characteristic understatement.
Those injuries include a broken neck, two knee operations, a broken shoulder and a hip replacement. Indeed, when he fell from his horse just before the Sydney Olympics in 2000, breaking his neck in two places, doctors told him he’d never ride again. ‘I just looked forward and kept myself busy,’ he says. ‘I was determined to get back on and keep going.’
Which, of course, he did in spectacular style. This summer, much to the delight of the country, Nick became not only the first Briton to win Olympic gold in the individual show jumping event, but the oldest British Olympic gold medallist since 1908. Tomorrow he’ll find out whether or not he’s been voted BBC Sports Personality Of the Year 2016.
‘It’s amazing to have been nominated but this has been a great year. Winning an Olympic gold is the ultimate for any sportsman,’ he says. ‘It’s been my life since the Seoul Olympics in 1988, so when you actually achieve it, it’s something else. It’s...’ he fumbles for the right word, ‘...magical! It was a magical thing to happen at the age I was and having the horse I did.’
That horse is his 13-year- old stallion Big Star, Nick’s equine partner of eight years. After jumping two clear rounds Nick was first up in the jump-off for the medals. His time was 42.82 seconds, but there were five more riders to come. ‘You don’t know you’ve won until the other riders finish, but Big Star went really well. He knew what he’d done. He’s a very intelligent horse. I was sitting there with him and then...’
And then the buttoned-up, nononsense Nick sobbed tears of sheer joy – a joy shared by the nation and his family. ‘All my dreams have come true,’ tweeted his jockey son Harry, while his elder son, National Hunt trainer Daniel, tweeted a picture of his father and the words, ‘I may be biased, but I think this is what a hero looks like.’
By the following morning Nick had received no fewer than 615 messages of congratulations, including numerous offers for Big Star. ‘ We got offered £12 millon but he’ll never be sold,’ says Nick. ‘We’ll probably be retiring him in a year and when he stops I’ll stop. I’ll never get a horse as good as him and I’ll be nearly 60. I’d have stopped a while ago if it hadn’t been for Big Star. You have to be close to all your horses to do this, but Big Star was always special. From the moment I rode him I knew how good he was.’
Nick bought Big Star, a Dutch-bred son of the celebrated Quick Star, as a five-year- old after his long-time girl-
friend and fellow Olympic gold medallist show jumper American Laura Kraut spotted him in a show. It marked the beginning of an extraordinary marriage between horse and rider in a sport, which, as Nick says, ‘is all about ups and downs’.
Born in Warwickshire, Nick sat on a horse for the first time when he was 18 months old. He started riding properly at six and used to skip school to ride his ponies when his father, who was in the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, was at work. He won his first European junior medal at 16 and was a star of British jumping in the 1970s. He also began to garner a reputation as a rogue. Take when he challenged former show jumping star Harvey Smith to a fight and was flattened with one punch. Or the time Ted Edgar, his former trainer, voiced his displeasure after Nick and his wife Sarah decided to have children, triggering a brawl in a Swedish hotel lobby.
Nick’s colourful love life was the stuff of Jilly Cooper novels. The nine-year marriage ended with Sarah, who sadly died ten years ago, locking him out of their Mauritius hotel room and throwing his clothes into the Indian Ocean when she discovered his affair with Bettina Melliger, the wife of a Swiss show jumper.
‘When I broke my neck it was very frustrating. When you do something all your life and then you can’t do it you despair,’ says Nick. ‘It affected my relationships. I was difficult to live with. I wasn’t ready to retire so it was a hard time. I didn’t ride for two years, but Dan was convinced I’d get on a horse again and he was right.’ In 2002, Nick saw a surgeon in Germany who encouraged him with the hope that he would, in fact, ride again. ‘I thought, “I’m going to do this. I am.” Then luckily I had the right horse.’ He’s referring to Arko III, upon whom he won the Br it ish Open title in 2004 and led until the final round at the Athens Olympics in the same year.
Today, a mellower, less combative Nick is happily settled with Laura who has shared his life for ten years. His sons, who lived with him from the ages of eight and 12, now both have homes near his stables in Warwickshire. ‘After Arko retired I had Big Star in the wings so there was always something to aim for,’ says Nick. ‘The horses always come first because you spend so much time with them – day in, day out. Your horse has to be cared for and looked after 24 hours a day.’
In 2012, Nick and Big Star won their first Olympic gold medal together as part of the winning Great Britain show jumping team. They only just missed a gold in the individual event when Big Star knocked over a fence near the end of the jump-off following a burst of premature celebration from the packed stands. Then in August 2013, Big Star injured a leg at the Dublin Nations Cup and had to be rested, but the pair were back competing nine months later.
‘I think winning in Rio was payback for London when I should have won,’ he says. ‘Since Rio the public have been amazing towards me on the street, on planes, in the supermarket – especially the older people who say how inspiring it was to see me do that at my age.’
He smiles. ‘But like I say, you just have to keep getting up and getting going.’ Which is what he does now, as he rushes off to watch his son Harry in a horse race.
Rebecca Hardy Sports Personality Of The Year is on BBC1 tomorrow at 6.40pm, and before that Nick competes at Olympia, The London International Horse Show, with coverage from 1.30pm on BBC2.
‘Big Star knew what he’d done. He’s a very intelligent horse’