Horse hero

Broad shard Simplicity

The riding horse with a swagger of a walk who can turn his hoof to anything but likes his privacy

BROADSHARD SIMPLICITY is such a strange horse because he’s in love with everybody the moment he steps out of his stable, but when he’s in his stable, that’s his domain,” muses producer Jayne Ross. “He can make some quite unattractive faces at you if he doesn’t want company. We’ve learned to respect his privacy, because he’s given us absolutely everything we’ve asked of him.”

He certainly has. Saucy, as he is known, stood supreme at Horse of the Year Show (HOYS) for the second year running last October. At Royal Windsor in May, he headed the ladies’ show horse line-up, despite it being the first time he’d carried a sidesaddle in the ring.

“We’d had the saddle on him a couple of times at home and he took to it straight away, as he does with anything,” says Jayne. “He was the easiest horse we’ve ever had to break. He didn’t need teaching in any way, shape or form how to carry himself.”

Saucy arrived at Carol Bardo’s Moor Farm, Jayne’s base, aged three from his then owners Michael Cook and Tony Reynolds, who had shown him in-hand.

“They always said he was beautiful, but they weren’t quite sure what he was,” recalls Jayne. “We started him off as a hack, which was a good thing because he’s quite enthusiastic in his gallop and had we set him alight too early it might have been his undoing. But a year or so later he was more mature.”

Saucy’s maturity was clear at Birmingham last year, when he breezed through the riding horse sections to stand supreme. He will be aimed at the Royal International and HOYS again, and who knows? Perhaps he’ll go into the record books with a hat-trick.

“It would be lovely, wouldn’t it, but you wouldn’t dare dream about it,” says Jayne. H&H