Jump storers

Jane Williams on providing poles and postboxes for shows around the world

The Jump Store came about thanks to a chance conversation with former British Showjumping chairman Michael Mac over 10 years ago.

He asked if I knew anywhere local that could house all their jumps and materials and, as we had a building standing empty, we offered. Twelve artic lorries arrived laden with wings, poles, fillers and accessories, and we quickly realised our building wasn’t big enough. So we put in a mezzanine floor to double the size.

The sorting of the original stock was a mammoth task.

Many of the old wooden wings were beyond repair and that gave us the incentive to design and construct replacement new wing styles, moving into producing aluminium frameworks, which have proved very successful.

I have ridden since I was four,

starting at a riding school. After leaving college, I worked in the British Showjumping Association offices, then managed the old British Equestrian Centre on the showground before working as show secretary at Horse of the Year Show for 18 years.

My partner Richard Prescott was brought up on a farm and working on the machinery ignited a passion for engineering. He used to race motorcycles and is still involved in classic motorcycles.

At any one time, we have 320 pairs of wings, 1,500 poles and 250 fillers, plus a set of workinghunter jumps. Our computer system lists and provides visuals of all available stock – we find it much easier to pick the materials by sight rather than reading descriptions, especially when it comes to the hundreds of different pole colour combinations we have.

I never imagined how technical

paint could be! Richard deals with all the technical aspects and is responsible for the welding of the aluminium wings and everything paint related, but we discuss everything.

The hardest part of the job is the continuous manhandling

of the poles and wings. The lorries often arrive back late in the evening after shows and all the jumps need to be unloaded, sorted and often reloaded ready for an early start the next morning. I think people are surprised at the sheer volume and logistics of it all, and how time-consuming things like counting in and out all the cups can be. Living on site means we are never really away from it all, but I do have three horses and Richard has his motorbikes, so we drift off and do our own things occasionally.

The British showjumping team winning gold at London 2012 was a very proud moment.

We manufactured all the jumps for the Games in six months – a challenge, but fun. We enlisted local help – our decorator had hidden skills as a freehand artist, and the local kitchen designer was excellent at painting poles.

Seeing our fences in the arena with the superb floral decorations made us very proud. We’d never actually seen the wings, poles and fillers we manufactured as a complete fence until then, so that was very surreal. The course-designers and their team did a fantastic job. We also won the contract for Rio 2016 and hearing that the 10 40ft-containers full of our jumps, dressage judges’ huts and arena markers had landed there safely was a huge relief.

While sourcing the poles for the Olympics and working with the course-designers, the importance of providing quality poles of the same weight and straightness became very

apparent, but we found them nearly impossible to source.

We felt the days of wooden poles were numbered, so after years of research, development and trialling of different compounds, we have produced an innovative pole made from a multi-polymer compound, which gives absolute accuracy in terms of weight, consistency, strength, flexibility and longevity.

They’ve passed the rigorous testing programme and as a result, we’ve been appointed the official UK testing centre for compound poles. These are very exciting times.

● As told to Jennifer Donald