Carl Hester

Carl and Dolendo

In his competition career, Carl has amassed a staggering 44 national dressage titles and has been British Dressage National Champion five times. He has competed in three Olympics, one World Equestrian Games, four European Championships and a World Cup Dressage Final.

Carl was raised on Sark, a tiny Channel island with no cars. Carl started out riding a stubborn donkey to the village shop, a world away from his current status amongst Britain’s top Grand Prix riders.

A string of ponies and horses on the island followed, until at age 19, Carl decided to apply for a job with horses on the mainland. It was at the Fortune Centre in Hampshire that Carl had his first opportunity to compete, and, with the centre’s skewbald mare, Jolly Dolly, Carl won the 1985 Young Dressage Rider Championship.

A brief dalliance with eventing followed, before Carl was approached by Dr Bechtolsheimer and asked if he would join his yard as a rider.

He worked and trained with Dr B for three and a half years, and in that time went to the World Championships, the European Championships, and the Barcelona Olympics, where he was the youngest British rider to ever compete in an Olympic Games.

He set up a yard with Kate Carter, which they ran together for 10 years. In 1996, Carl won the Dressage Trainer of the Year and, in 1997 was awarded the Spillers Equestrian Personality of the Year.

In 2004, Carl went solo, and with Escapado was the highest-placed British combination at the 2004 Athens Olympics as well as the 2005 European Championships, where they finished sixth with a personal record-score.

Unfortunately both Carl’s horses in contention for the 2008 Olympics, Dolendo and Lecantos, ended up out of the running due to injuries, but 2009 saw him return to the grand prix circuit with Dolendo and his new ride, Liebling. Leibling was later sold to a Canadian rider.

2010 was a great year for Carl; not only did he star in his own H&C series, At Home with Carl Hester, but he was part of the silver medal winning team at the World Equestrian Games in Kentucky after Leibling II's new owner kindly lent 'Lenny' to Carl to join Team GB temporarily when it was announced that Uthopia would be saved for the Olympics.

All eyes are now on Carl and his promising mount Uthopia for London 2012.