Tim Stockdale
Champion showjumper and broadcaster whose defining motto was ‘There’s no such word as can’t!’
TIM STOCKDALE, who has died of cancer aged 54, was a showjumper who represented Great Britain at more than 50 Nations Cup events and at World and European championships. He rode in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, and two years later he was chef d’equipe as Great Britain won the Nations Cup in Abu Dhabi.
Stockdale regarded winning the coveted King George V Gold Cup at the 2010 Royal International Horse Show with Kalico Bay as the pinnacle of his career. But in October the following year there was a serious setback: trying out potential new young horses in Wales, he was thrown and broke his neck, fracturing three vertebrae.
It seemed for a time that his riding days might be over, but his determination put him back in the saddle after only three months, and he returned to top-level competition soon after. His 2012 autobiography was entitled There’s No Such Word as Can’t! – his defining motto.
As one of his early mentors, Graham Fletcher, wrote in the foreword: “In the history of showjumping, it is only a small number who have had the ability, tenacity and willpower to keep achieving at the highest level. One of those is Tim Stockdale.”
Timothy Mark Stockdale was born at Retford, Nottinghamshire, on August 12 1964, with his twin brother, Ivan, to Nancy and Geoffrey Stockdale. They were two of six children.
Young Tim’s introduction to riding horses was inauspicious: it took place one summer holiday when he, his twin brother and his younger sister were packed off to a local riding school to get them out of the house. His initial reaction was that riding hurt and the ponies smelt.
Though he was a bright, driven child, he preferred the practical to the academic, excelling at sports, especially football and cricket.
His father was in the construction business and Tim inherited an aptitude for building and repair. This led to a remarkably early career as an eight-year-old handyman at the local riding school, which paid him in free riding lessons.
Given his early experience, this role was not ideal for the boy, but he experienced a “eureka” moment one evening when he was riding ponies out to pasture. Encouraged to canter, he was initially nervous, but fear suddenly gave way to exhilaration: his future course was set.
He acquired the family’s first ponies, Danny Boy and Corky, and at the age of 12 he was inspired by seeing Mike Saywell and his horse Chainbridge win the prestigious 1976 King George V Gold Cup on television.
After leaving school, Stockdale took tentative steps into the horse trade, training and dealing. When he learnt that his hero, Saywell, had moved into the area, he rushed to his yard and begged for a job. Grit and determination led to his recruitment by Graham Fletcher as his second jockey.
A tough apprenticeship continued with the owner and breeder John “Jet” Taylor, and continued with Susan and Lutz Meyerding. It was with the Meyerdings that he competed in his first international show, on their horse, Supermarket, in France in 1988.
Stockdale began to attract owners and struck out to set up his own yard in rented facilities in Chesham, Buckinghamshire. Competing at Henley in 1991, he came across a young woman helping to groom for another rider.
She was his future wife, Laura Cocklin; they became personal and professional partners, investing in an established yard that needed renovation in Northamptonshire. They developed it into a first-class operation.
His own career in the saddle flourished. He also won the grand prix at the 2002 Horse of the Year Show and in 2008 finished 16th in the individual showjumping at the Beijing Olympics.
His partner in China, Corlato, was injured the following year, after the pair had been denied the Gold Cup at the last fence of the jump-off. But with his new mount, Kalico Bay, Stockdale forged a successful partnership: in 2010 they won three grands prix together, including his career highpoint, the Gold Cup, and were placed at the Horse of the Year Show and the Olympia grand prix.
There had been a hiccup in 2002 when Stockdale was banned from Olympic competition after his horse tested positive for a sedative (acepromazine). But he was reinstated two years later as the offence was deemed to be minor, and the sedative not performance-enhancing.
Tim Stockdale – who trained several young riders who went on to compete for Britain – served as chairman of the British Showjumping Association’s marketing committee. He was awarded the British Equestrian Federation Medal of Honour and the Federation Equestre International’s Gold Medal; he also received an honorary MSC from Nottingham Trent University.
A showman and a skilled communicator, Stockdale was a natural for television. He was the subject of a Channel 4 documentary in the mid-1990s, and on the programme Faking It he transformed a nightclub dancer from south London into a showjumper in four weeks.
In 2006 he trained up celebrities for the BBC programme Only Fools on Horses in aid of Sport Relief. “Tim was kind, hilarious and very, very patient when he tried to teach a motley crew of us how to showjump,” recalled one of his charges, the BBC DJ, Sara Cox.
Until recently, Stockdale also served as a commentator and pundit in Sky Sport’s showjumping coverage.
At horse shows and fairs he loved entertaining the crowd. One of his favourite lines was to ask: “I’ve forgotten, what’s that fancy word they use for the shape a horse makes over a jump?” The shout would come back: “Bascule!” and he would retort: “Who are you calling a bascule?”
Tim Stockdale married Laura Cocklin in 1996. She survives him, along with their two sons.
Tim Stockdale, born August 12 1964, died November 14 2018