BURGHLEY WINNER PIPPA FUNNELL
One of the most popular winners of the Land Rover Burghley Horse Trials of recent times, Pippa Funnell tells Julie Harding that behind 2019’s extraordinary victory lay years of struggle, pain and self-doubt
“How I overcame a confidence crisis before victory”
JOYOUS. THERE IS no other way to describe the outcome of last year’s Burghley Horse Trials. For the audience in the stands. For the people watching at home on TV. For the riders in the collecting ring. (OK, perhaps not initially for bridesmaid Piggy French, for who likes to lose the toughest event on the planet by a microscopic 0.1 of a penalty?) For the winner’s entourage. And, of course, for the emotional and misty-eyed victor herself — Pippa Funnell. (They were tears of joy.) Sixteen years had elapsed since her other victory at this Lincolnshire event, the time between necessitating riding the eventing roller coaster of failure and success and the “hamster wheel” of one relentless March to October season after another.
“This win was one of my most special moments in eventing. I’d put it right up there,” says the 51-year-old who thanks her lucky stars that she’s involved in a sport that doesn’t force a retirement party on its participants before their 30th birthday.
Pippa is in the barn at Cobbetts Farm, well insulated against the new year cold in a quilted gilet, coat and red patterned scarf that cocoons her neck. She makes a few final strokes with a body brush to a shiny-coated bay mare called Billy Sarafina, who she jump-schooled this morning. Sarafina has big, kind eyes and a calm demeanour, as do all the horses in this barn, some of whom look out over their loose box doors as Sarafina is led to the horse-walker. Tranquillity isn’t a rare interlude here, though, and nor is it an accident, for Pippa’s metier isn’t blithely to turn equines into machine-like eventers; she runs an educational establishment for horses where she expects good behaviour and hard work and in return she imbues her charges with happiness, a love of life and a sense of self-worth.
“I love the horses,” she states, admitting that she cries like a baby when one of the jumpers she has been producing is sold, for, belonging as they do to the Billy Stud (set up and run by her showjumper husband, William, and Donal Barnwell), every jumper is for sale should the right offer — and the right home — come along.
Where once Pippa’s yard at Cobbetts Farm was stuffed to the gills solely with eventers, today those destined to fly over cross-country fences rub noses with her team of showjumpers. “I’ve got 10 jumpers here, half of whom are youngsters. Sometimes William will say,
‘Pip, can you take on this one’. I started Billy Congo,” she notes, referring to William’s gold medal-winning European Championship ride. But although pure showjumping gives her a buzz and a good excuse to seek the sun during a grey British winter — she’s off to Spain shortly for the Sunshine Tour — the first horses she greets and tends to in the morning are her eventers.
“I still regard eventing as my priority,” she declares. “A few years ago, I made the decision to reduce numbers so I’m not out competing every weekend because I’ve done all that. I also think my eventers have been on good form because I haven’t been over-training them. The fact that I have
the odd week when I’m off showjumping benefits them and it means that I’m not tempted to over-drill them — there has to be something in that. A few weeks before last year’s autumn run at the Europeans, Burghley and Blenheim, while out hacking and doing canter work, I really sensed that they were feeling on good form, both mentally and physically, which was a great feeling to have at that stage of the season.”
In the Funnell’s swish home that was extended and renovated six years ago to give them a huge, wow-inducing kitchen/living area and four bedrooms, there is no sign of the silver Burghley winner’s plate.
“It’s with the owners, Jane and Jonathan Clarke. They aren’t just great owners, they’re dear friends too, like so many of my owners who have stayed so loyal to me throughout my career,” says Pippa, who goes on to admit that the Clarkes’ attention-seeking Irish-bred bay MGH Grafton Street (aka Squirrel) didn’t possess a completely fault-free CV when he sprung his surprise win.
“He had blips on his record and it’s so easy to put the dampers on horses like that and think that they aren’t going to be any good. With him the hiccups had been where he wasn’t in control of his shoulders on the tighter turns. I say to the young riders
I teach, don’t be hard on yourself or the horse if things go wrong. It’s just a part of the learning process.
“Squirrel had always been able to do a good dressage test, showjump clear and go well across country, but it was a question of linking them all at the same event — and that turned out to be Burghley. However, there’s still more to come. He’s not the finished article yet.”
Riding Squirrel up to Burghley’s main arena on the Wednesday morning, Pippa had a premonition — call it a sixth sense if you like — that this contest could well be hers. “I had a gut feeling as to how well he felt. I remembered the first year I won Badminton [in 2002] on Rocky [Supreme Rock] that as I rode him out of the stables and into the park I thought how amazing he seemed. Then on Squirrel all those years later, riding him on a loose contact past all the tents and distractions, I felt the same way. He was like that all week. He can be cheeky, but even in the dressage warm up he was so focused. In the stables the girls said he seemed to be seeking attention and acting as though he was the main man. I was even drawn 77 — my lucky number. At Burghley it felt like all the stars had aligned. It was bizarre.” It turned out that the stars lined up for Pippa at other moments during 2019 too.
She scooped a team silver medal at the European Championships with Majas Hope and was crowned BT Sport Action Woman of the Year, fending off seven other contenders in a public vote.
In her acceptance speech she revealed: “I’ve had the most amazing career and a long career, but any person’s career over the space of 35 years isn’t just going to be about good days. There have been a lot of tough days, hard days when things don’t go your way or you have injuries.”
Talk about close to the bone. That she has had “hard days” within the last half decade is as understating as saying Andy Murray just had a sore hip, rather than a monumentally painful one. A series of horror tumbles during the 2010s left Pippa bruised, pained and concussed.
“I was in hospital for five days after a fall from Sandman at Withington,” she reveals. “I lost feeling in both my arms and afterwards they became extra sensitive with horrific pins and needles. I still get pain down my left arm. You lose confidence and I struggled with it more than people would have known. You try and deal with it on your own because you have owners and you have a duty to them.
“What with the lost confidence and because I was sore, I wasn’t enjoying eventing any more. I would question why I was doing it and I had that going on in my head more than I let on.”
She hit rock bottom with a pending run at Luhmühlen in Germany on Billy The Biz. “I didn’t want to go because I didn’t feel confident enough and I made such a big issue of it in my head that I felt if I made the decision not to go then that would have been it — retirement. And so I forced myself to go and I was virtually sweating because I didn’t want to ride. But because I faced up to it, it was like a lightbulb moment and I realised that I obviously didn’t want to retire.”
Pippa found that one of the ways of getting out of her dark place was by going back to the “abc basics” of riding, just as legendary trainer Ruth McMullen had instructed her from her first lesson aged 16.
Another was through the advice offered up by a few respected individuals.
“Dressage coach Tracie Robinson was one of the people who helped me. She said,
remember what you’ve achieved and paddle your own canoe. So I started to think that I should just get on and ride. I’ve produced that many horses and I should believe in myself.” Others imparting wise words were Yogi Breisner, former World Class performance manager to the British eventing team,
Pippa’s husband William, and Ash Wallace, head of physio for the GB Equestrian Team. Ash erased much of the pain from her sore body too. It was a revelation to the Surreybased eventer that much of her physical malaise was treatable.
But still, even now, if she has a quiet day (a rarity in the Funnell household) or is off games, her mind will play tricks.
“My body and brain can’t cope. I thrive on being go, go, go. So much of mental health is surely about having too much time to over-analyse things. Often my demons come out at night before sleep, and when they do I recognise them. If I start to get over-anxious I will completely divert my mind’s thoughts — so I’ll do a Sudoku, or think what presents I should be buying for Christmas.”
Endlessly receptive to new ideas and techniques both in and out of the saddle, Pippa is one of few riders among those eventing toughies who will admit to having embraced sports psychology.
“I often find before big events that my mind turns to negative psychology. It’s my brain playing tricks, but I’ve learned to turn it into a positive. You’re taught to think positively, but I often go the other way and blow things out of all proportion. So, if I’m riding a strong horse, my imagination will make him seem so strong that he’s unrideable. Therefore, when I actually get on the horse, things aren’t nearly as bad as I’d imagined.”
So, now back at the sport’s pinnacle, surely she must be desperate to compete once more under those five interlocking rings?
“My first plan is that I’ve got three nice horses to aim at five-star this spring and we’ll see how that goes and what it leads to. And if I look like I might be in the top three or four [for Tokyo], I’ll make sure that I’m prepared. But I’m not standing here now [by her granite-topped island, munching on a wheat snack having already made two cups of tea and kindly offered to rustle up lunch] thinking that I must go to Tokyo. I’ve been so incredibly lucky to have ridden at three Olympic Games. However, there’s nothing like that sick feeling and the pressure. I get that at all the big ones and I think, why do
I do this? The nerves and the thought processes are as bad as they’ve ever been and I don’t know why. I hate it. The only good thing is that from experience you recognise it as familiar and you know that once you go through the start gates it will disappear. “Maybe it’s because of the horrendous nerves that we get such a buzz. And when it comes off, there’s no greater feeling of pride than standing on that podium having represented your country.”
“What with the lost confidence and because I was sore and not enjoying it any more, I would question why I was eventing”