Interview
Emma Bedford runs Your Horse Live and is on a mission to make the show bigger and better every year. She reveals plenty of preparation secrets right here
EMMA BEDFORD CAN always be found at Your Horse Live in a pair of leopard print Dubarry boots. She may have several pairs of sassy, towering Jimmy Choos, Christian Louboutins and Gucci shoes in her wardrobe at home, but only her Dubarrys tick all her boxes when it comes to functional, comfortable footwear. “I once wanted to be a shoe designer and I admit that shoes are my guilty pleasure. I’m often obsessed with styles no one else likes,” laughs the equine event director of Your Horse Live, the biggest extravaganza in Britain of all things horse. It’s no wonder that Emma pops on a pair of flat boots, eschewing the heels over those three days, for she walks around 60km during the November fixture, making her way around and between the two sizeable arenas, along the rows that separate the 400 tradestands in the shopping area, out to see the horses in the 80 stables, as well as the diminutive ponies in the rescue village, back and forth to the show office numberless times, and then up and down the steps of the arena seating, which can accommodate 3,000 in the main BETA Arena and 900 in the Country & Stable Arena.
Armed with a walkie-talkie, anyone who encounters Emma sees a smiling, affable, chatty and communicative show director with seemingly barely a care in the world, but appearances can be deceptive, says the 47-year-old Peterborough resident. “Sometimes you’re like a swan, so that your feet are flapping, but no one else sees the panic,” she reveals. “You need to be
unflappable, or be seen as unflappable, and all the time you have to appear confident.” Emma took over the reins at Your Horse Live (YHL) a decade ago. She’s 100% responsible for everything that goes on. “I make all the final decisions with input from the team — good and bad. It’s good pressure and I love it,” she says. During the 2000s, before she appeared on the scene, Your Horse Live still ran at Stoneleigh Park; even then it was the UK’s biggest equestrian shopping show, with around 300 mainly equine (rather than lifestyle) tradestands, but those who attended then experienced an event more akin to a giant car boot sale. “You could pick up some great bargains, but we wanted to grow the show into a premier, must-go-to fixture, so we upped the game and we now attract world class riders, experts and star horses. We try to inspire riders and owners, whatever their level, while the tradestands boast everything from a plastic curry comb to top end saddles and £40,000 horseboxes, but, having said that, there are still plenty of bargains to be had.”
Emma has always seen the function of Your Horse Live as bringing to life the well-thumbed, informative features found on the colourful, glossy pages of Your Horse magazine. “We have top class horses and riders in the main arena and ‘how to’ sessions right from the pages of the magazine in arena 2. We pride ourselves on being the show where people can get close to the stars.” Dressage’s Carl Hester and Charlotte Dujardin, plus Maria and Michael Eilberg, eventers Mary and Emily King, Lucinda Fredericks and Jonty Evans, and showjumpers Ben Maher, Geoff Billington and Jay Halim are just a few of the luminaries who have entertained and informed the crowds over the last 10 years. And Emma’s favourite? Diplomatically she answers Valegro so as not to offend any human celebs. “Two years ago, Charlotte walked into the arena and said, ‘I’ve got a friend I want you to meet’, and in came Valegro. He literally lifted the roof. It was fascinating to see how he played with the audience and how the visitors responded to him,” recalls Emma. So how does Emma attract the great and the good from Olympic sports and beyond? By building relationships with them over a long period of time, she states. “Part of my job is to understand how we can help the riders and their sponsors and then there is a conversation. You pick up the phone and see if you can come to an agreement. Networking is a part of my job. Ten years ago I wouldn’t have imagined getting in touch with an Olympic gold medallist, but I grew up and one of my closest friends is Cutty [event rider Sarah Cohen]. She will put in a word for me.”
“The team walks into empty halls, and has to erect 3,900 seats and mark out tradestands and stables. It’s like a well-oiled machine”
Emma and her team start conversations with the big names 18 months to a year in advance and she is already planning and having conversations with the 2020 celebrities on her wishlist. “It’s nerve-racking until they’re signed — and we can’t promote them until their name is on the dotted line. Isabell Werth has just signed [for this year], and we’re so excited that she’ll be doing a Saturday gala performance for her 50th birthday. Two years ago there was a gala for Carl Hester’s 50th. It demonstrates how far the show has come in attracting riders of this calibre.” Emma’s dream team for the 2020 fixture would be a clutch (or even a duo) of legendary Whitaker showjumpers. “I’ve been trying to woo them for years. Watch this space,” she laughs.
Emma knows her audience, and what they like. Although surveys have shown that there’s a vast spectrum of people attending, the average is a woman in her late 40s; the kind of person who places their horse on a pedestal and who squirrels away their hard-earned cash to splash in November. They turn up keenly at Stoneleigh Park armed with a lengthy shopping list, akin to those sales enthusiasts who make a beeline for Harrods and other iconic stores after Christmas. “We have a shop and drop area and by 10am it’s totally full because people race to their shopping list places first thing.” Emma once was her average YHL ticket holder. She owned a stocky 15.3hh cob called Foxy who stepped out of his class and gave the imposing ex-racehorses and hunt horses a run for their money for 10 years on the high-octane team chase circuit. He collected red rosettes (including championship ones) with regularity as a valued member of the feared Frogmarchers. “I was 16 when I bought Foxy. He was amazing and could turn on a sixpence. He was my horse of a lifetime. I do miss riding because after Foxy retired, I got pregnant with my son, Freddie, and I never bought another horse,” reveals Emma, who grew up on the Fitzwilliam Estate, where her father, Pete Maddison, was kennelman. “I had a lovely childhood spent with the Fitzwilliam Pony Club and in the hunting field, which made me brave. My mum [Wilma] wasn’t horsey, but she did everything she could for me, including driving the trailer. She was scared to death and I didn’t appreciate at the time all that she did while feeling that way.” Twenty-six years ago Emma moved to EMAP, now Bauer Media Group, publisher of Your Horse magazine, where her career path has been diverse and interesting and has included marketing publications in the fishing and motorbike sectors, as well as becoming associate publisher of equine. When Emma took over YHL, she was a complete newbie to show organisation. “My first year was daunting and exciting — it was the unknown — but I could see the opportunities and the team was great.”
Little can prepare anyone for their first fixture, even if they are, like Emma, organised, efficient and dynamic. After all, you plan it on a piece of paper and then work tirelessly to turn it into the real deal to be enjoyed by 25,000 people, but you can never totally anticipate what might go wrong — whether you might have mistakenly under-ordered hand gel and run out (it hasn’t happened yet), accidentally arranged for a stallion to be stabled between two mares (that hasn’t happened either), or there’s a burst water pipe during the show (that has happened). “Two years ago on the Sunday afternoon, a pipe started leaking in the cattle sheds by the arena. It seeped under the seats and meant that we had to remove people and horses and then shut the arena down, deal with the stands and the people with no panic before starting the clear up,” recalls Emma of one of her headaches. “We also once had a security issue — a suitcase had been left behind. Fortunately it turned out to belong to a trader and was full of headcollars.” Emma has even found herself taking part in Lorenzo’s fast and furious main arena act with his grey Lusitano horses. “Lorenzo decided that he needed an arena party to help. However, it would have involved putting our Crown Riding Club arena party in a risky situation — something I wouldn’t do — and so I volunteered, along with a couple of the team. I went to the tradestands and bought some riding hats and then ended up in the ring moving obstacles before ducking down behind them as Lorenzo stood on his horses and jumped over. “The visitors should never know if there’s been an issue. We’re good at firefighting. Over the years with horses and thousands of people you’re always going to have things that trip you up. There’s no set day. You arrive and you’ve no idea what’s going to happen.” In 2017 Emma and her team realised that the show and the venue had reached capacity — it had become a ‘victim’ of its own success. There was nowhere to grow. So last year, YHL was expanded to run over three days, incorporating Masterclass Fridays when the main arena is taken over by top trainers.
“Sometimes you’re like a swan. Your feet are flapping, but no one else sees the panic”
Emma couldn’t run YHL without her surprisingly small but dedicated team, whose core consists of Clare Hall, who sells tradestands, and Caroline Meech, who heads up ‘ops’, the incredible band that puts together the show’s infrastructure at Stoneleigh Park in a mere three long, full on and frenetic days. “They start on Tuesday morning — there’s a show the weekend before and so that’s the first time we can get access — and it all has to be ready by Thursday night,” explains Emma. “The team walks into empty halls and has to erect 3,900 seats and mark out all the tradestands and stables. It’s like a well-oiled machine. Everything also has to be taken down within a day. We’re all off site by the Monday night.” The sleepless nights, filled with thoughts of running out of toilet rolls (the team orders thousands), or the 800 bottles of Prosecco not turning up on time, have already begun for Emma. “My insomnia starts three months out and it gets worse every year because we challenge ourselves to make the experience better. We constantly put more pressure on ourselves to make the next show more perfect that the last.”