The Hickstead Derby winner

ANNELI will always be best associated with MerelyA-Monarch, but her Hickstead Derby win came courtesy of the “amazing” Xanthos II (pictured). First impressions were not good, however. A friend urged Anneli to try “this fantastic horse”, who was proving too difficult for his young rider.

“I thought my friend must have lost her marbles; it looked like a pony, but out of respect I did sit on him,” she remembers. “He was like a bomb: hot, unorthodox and stamped his feet, but his jump was amazing, so I bought him, thinking I could fix him.”

Back home, Xanthos would bite her legs and paw the ground, and in desperation she put her groom on board while she watched, to try to work him out.

“He pinned his ears back and galloped over the jumps, so fast but unbelievable, it took your breath away,” she says. “I realised I’d have to let him go his way. From then on I’d shut my eyes and let him charge at the first fence and then he’d settle.”

The 15.1hh – known as Tiger at home, “he wasn’t cuddly” – went on to win the Hickstead Derby and two Italian Derbies.

“I remember going into the ring at Hickstead and the bookmaker announced his starting price of 40/1,” Anneli says. “I thought, ‘What cheek, he’s not that bad!’ – it inspired me to win.”