Emile Faurie
With a string of top-class horses at his fingertips, the 53-year-old’s career is still on the up. Alice Collins visits him at his immaculate Cotswold home
EMILE FAURIE always looks composed. He has great hair. And perfect, blinding-white teeth.
OK, not quite always. Today, he’s still his authoritative and slightly intimidating self, but with the edges knocked off; he has man flu. Big time.
For the first time since 2011, he says, he wanted to have a duvet day. And this from one of the most active men in dressage: since being appointed training supervisor and sales manager to Kasselman stables (of PSI Auction fame) earlier this year, he now has a staggering seven grand prix horses at his disposal (that’s enough to make even the grand prix factory that is Isabell Werth envious).
It’s full-circle for Emile, who did a threeyear stint at Kasselman’s when he was 21.
Emile’s megawatt smile isn’t much in evidence today; he truly feels awful. But he soldiers on, telling me about his early days in a non-horsey family in South Africa.
He began life in Cape Town and went to boarding school there. After much nagging, the young Emile finally persuaded his parents to take him for a riding lesson.
“You handed over your rand — about £2 now — and they gave you a horse. I got Apache, a skewbald, and fell off him about nine times,” he recalls. “He’d walk to a certain point, then spin round and run home. Every time he did it, I fell off.”
What on earth possessed him to pursue this perilous pastime? He shrugs wistfully.
“I dunno. I just always knew that I wanted to do it.”
It was an inauspicious start to what would become a stellar career, taking in two Olympic Games — so far — and numerous European Championships.
Emile is truly dreadful with dates. He can’t
‘I keep meaning to frame my medals — but I’d quite like to add some more
to the collection before I do’
remember when things happened, or how long people have worked for him. But ask him about his team appearances and he knows instantaneously, instinctively, which year, which horse and where they finished.
That’s especially the case for all the medals he’s won — which now hang on the curtain rail in his office.
“I keep meaning to frame them,” he says, then grins, “but I’d quite like to add some more to the collection before I do.”
IN 2005 — as an Islington resident but more as a dressage groupie — I was in the front row at the local theatre pub,
The King’s Head, to watch Emile act in JeanPaul Sartre’s Huis Clos. The critics weren’t as favourable as judges are towards him, but acting and singing remain on Emile’s roster of interests. In fact, he’s about to take up singing lessons again.
“I just love being taught,” he enthuses. “That’s why I’m so happy to have a trainer, Hartmut Lammers, again.”
He’s less keen on being taught how to cook. “I live on my own so I don’t eat well,” he admits. “I had a lot of microwave meals — terrible — so I went on a health kick and ordered veg boxes. But I’m away so much I ended up having to throw them away.
“I often go to the local pub — The Hare at Milton — and have a steak after work now. I can’t cook and I hate it, but I’m OK in the summer as I can entertain with barbecues.”
Emile ticked off a surprising item on his bucket list recently: baking a cake.
“It was a Black Forest gateau,” he says proudly. “It was a mess to look at because I had no patience to wait for it to cool before putting the cream on. But it tasted pretty good.”
His skills extend beyond cakes, acting and horses: Emile’s an unbelievable linguist — he gained a good grasp of German in the three years he spent there but, remarkably, managed to continue to improve it in the years after leaving and now does all the translating and voiceovers for the PSI sales horse videos. His mother tongue is Afrikaans; he speaks Dutch and pidgin Swedish — enough to teach in it.
But in this hectic schedule, something’s got to give, and Emile’s currently single.
“There is no love life; there’s no time,” he says. “I’m not desperate, but I’m open to offers. It would take a special person to put up with me being here, there and everywhere.”
EMILE’s not unfriendly; he answers my questions readily, but he’s guarded — sometimes even cagey perhaps. And there are some no-go subjects: a marriage (to a woman!), a stint in Greece modelling and a former owner who’s now in jail.
But get him talking about his charity, the Emile Faurie Foundation, which gives underprivileged children the chance to ride, and he’s animated and passionate.
It was one single, poignant encounter that set everything in motion.
“I remember one day when I did a masterclass at Hartpury, and some schoolchildren from Birmingham came along. At the end, they came into the arena to pat the horse. One girl stood to the side and I asked her if she was scared. She said: ‘No, I’m not scared, but I’m black and black people don’t ride.’ It was heartbreaking and I decided right there and then that I’d work for equal opportunities. We ended up funding her — and 1,400 others — through the programme.”
ICOMPLIMENT him on how tidy and tasteful his home is.
“I’m thinking of going minimalist,” he says, lounging in an opulent deep red velvet sofa and gesturing around him at the immaculate Cotswold stone house.
Umm, there isn’t much in here you could throw away, I think to myself.
“No, properly minimalist,” he adds, reading my thoughts. “I’m talking stripped-back white floorboards and basically no furniture.”
If he’s going minimalist at home, he’s definitely going maximalist professionally. At last count, he regularly trains 52 riders. It sounds exhausting, but his energy and enthusiasm are palpable, even through the man flu.
Earlier this season, he became the first British rider in history to win the Hamburg Derby — a prestigious German grand prix class in which the three finalists all have to ride a test on each other’s horses.
That night, he “drank too much gin, got thrown in a pool and smoked about three packs of cigarettes”. He’s not touched one since.
It’s not all drinking and partying for Emile, though. He’s looking super-trim these days. He rides half a dozen horses every day, which certainly helps with the fitness — and fatness.
Now, with so much horsepower at his fingertips, he’s never been better placed to chase down more medals. With Lollipop 126, the bouncy little Weekend Fun and Bohemo Tinto on the international circuit, a place on this year’s Europeans team is not unlikely.
The good parts of his life have come to the fore, particularly in recent months. He’s 53, but his career is in the ascendancy. And with all this travelling to Finland and now to Germany, this man of extremes must have enough frequent flyer miles to take him several times around the globe whenever he does eventually retire. I wouldn’t bank on that being any time soon.