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British dressage rider Carl Hester participated in the Olympics for the seventh time last month as he and the rest of Team UK competed in Paris. This achievement made him only the second British athlete to participate in seven Olympic Games. Throughout his career spanning over 30 years, he has played a pivotal role in the significant developments within British dressage, especially in the last 15 years. His journey has taken him to great moments around the world, but his riding career began on a tiny island in the French Channel.
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Born in Cambridge, Hester moved with his family to Sark, an island with 500 residents, when he was just four years old. Unlike many elite riders, he neither grew up with horses at home nor had parents who could afford to buy him his competition horse. His first experiences with riding were on a donkey when he went shopping at the local grocer. Later, a holiday job had him driving tourists around the island in a horse-drawn cart. Nevertheless, young Carl Hester also participated in a few horse competitions, particularly making a mark at Sark’s annual horse show, which included horse racing.
Driven by his passion for riding and the lack of local opportunities, Hester left Sark at the age of 19 to try his luck in Hampshire, southern England, where he got the opportunity to ride. It didn’t take long before he began to find success in his dressage career. His journey, which briefly included trying out eventing (resulting in a broken ankle and shoulder), brought him to Jannie and Christopher Taylor, where he especially worked with their more challenging horses. Today, he credits his time at the Taylor family’s farm for providing him with basic horse understanding or "Horsemanship," which has developed into perhaps his greatest strength as a rider. After three and a half years with the Taylor family, he took the next step in his career, from which everything would change for the young Hester.
When Carl Hester started working for Dr. Wilfried Bechtolsheimer, also known as "Dr. B," he was still relatively unknown. Here, he had the chance to improve his own riding skills and simultaneously train and compete with Bechtolsheimer's horses. During Hester's three and a half years with Bechtolsheimer, he made his debut at the World Championships, European Championships, and the Olympic Games, in 1990, 1991, and 1992, respectively. Hester particularly distinguished himself by becoming the youngest dressage rider to represent Great Britain at the Olympics, and he finished as the highest-placed British rider, despite his young age.
After his time with Wilfried Bechtolsheimer, it was time for Carl Hester to take more control over his career and his horses. This initially occurred through a business partnership with breeder Kate Carter. The partnership continued until Hester was ready to acquire his own farm, which happened in 2004 when he settled near Newent in Gloucestershire, where he still resides today. The years after his time with Bechtolsheimer were a quieter period for Hester sportingly. From 1992 to 2012, Hester missed five European Championships, four World Championships, and three Olympic Games. It appeared to be a period where sporting ambitions had to stand a bit in the background of his other duties as a professional rider. And although sporting results have since improved somewhat, competitions are still not his first priority as a rider – his passion is training, as he has told Horse & Hound.
In 2007, then 21-year-old Charlotte Dujardin began working for Carl Hester. Her task was primarily to break in horses. Four years later, she was tasked with preparing the 8-year-old gelding Valegro to compete at the top level with Hester. At that time, Hester himself was in a good phase, having won silver medals in the team competition at both the European Championships in 2009 and the World Championships in 2010 with Liebling II. Dujardin and Valegro quickly developed as a duo, and after half a year together, they joined Carl Hester and his new star horse Uthopia at the European Championships in 2011, where the British team won gold medals. Together with Laura Bechtolsheimer, the daughter of Hester's former employer and mentor, who was also part of the gold-winning European Championship team, Hester, Uthopia, Dujardin, and Valegro were all set to impress at the London Olympics the following year.
Before the London Olympics, Great Britain had never won Olympic medals in dressage. However, the combination of the team's good form in the years leading up to it, and the fact that the competition was held in their home country, sparked great enthusiasm around the team and their Olympic participation. Few might have believed their success story would be as significant as it turned out to be.
Dujardin, Bechtolsheimer, and Hester finished the individual competition in respectively 1st, 3rd, and 5th places, while the British team took first place and the gold medals, the first non-German team to do so since 1980. This made the British team stars in their home country, and Hester received attention both as a rider and stable owner. In particular, Hester’s role in training Valegro and his success brought increased attention, and since the Olympic success in London, he has written and co-authored several books, including a biography and various children’s books about Valegro. The Rio de Janeiro Olympics were not as successful as London for either Hester or the British team, who finished in respectively seventh and second places. However, Dujardin and Valegro repeated their success in the individual competition with nearly five points more than Isabell Werth, who finished in second place. The Rio de Janeiro Olympics marked Valegro’s last competition, and he officially retired from sport at the end of that year at the age of 14. He has since enjoyed his life as a sports retiree on the farm, alongside his European and Olympic team-mate Uthopia.
Since 2016, Hester has continued to be a constant part of the British teams, which have almost consistently ended up with medal placements at all international competitions since then. In the period from 2009-2024, it was only the World Championships in Herning the previous year that he missed, which greatly illustrates his riding skills and his talent for training horses. Although he has rarely been the biggest star in terms of results, there are strong arguments that he has played the biggest role in Great Britain’s success in dressage. Charlotte Fry, the current world champion in individual dressage, was trained by Hester for a four-year period before moving to Holland. He has thus had an influence on and trained several of both the most successful horses and riders on the successful British teams.
Today, Carl Hester is 57 years old, and it is no secret that he is considering ending his active sports career soon. After the recently concluded Olympics in Paris, where the British team won bronze medals and Hester himself reached sixth place in the individual competition, he was asked about a possible career stop. Here, Hester made it clear that his active sports career might be over. But maybe it is not. Regardless, there is no doubt that if Carl Hester’s sports career is now over, he has marked himself as one of the modern legends of dressage. Earlier this year, it was announced that a movie about Hester’s life is currently in the early development stage, and while it is still possible that it might not happen, one should not underestimate what an English-language film could potentially do for the sport’s popularity. Regardless, there is no doubt that even if Carl Hester is finished competing professionally, he will continue to leave his mark on the sport for many years to come.
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Sources:
Carl Hester's web page: Carl Hester MBE | Olympic Gold Medalist
FEI database: Welcome to FEI Database
