Jumping London

But at the heart of every great equestrian athlete is a kid who dreamed of simply riding – and it’s clear how much joy Jodie gets simply from being around horses, whether they’re elite performers or cherished pets. And so with that, it’s high time to head back outside, into the familiar sweetness of the stables and then beyond, where Jodie is escorting me for a hack on two of the family stable’s kindly cobs. It’s easy to think of equestrian sport as something that unfolds purely in the moneyed rural areas of the country, scarcely straying further inward than London’s high-income commuter belt. But for Jodie – and, indeed, many showjumpers and enthusiasts – the sport is becoming an increasingly urban one. When we meet, it’s not in some sun-dappled field peppered with birdsong, but rather, in the last mews in London that’s retained its original purpose: housing horses and the people who love them.

“My great grandparents actually had a grocery shop in Camden, and then they ventured out into the suburbs and started a riding school,” says 22-year-old Jodie, who grew up in the same environment and doesn’t even remember her first time sitting on a pony. “I was out in the stables every day or playing in the fields – I was very lucky with the upbringing I had. Being so close to the city, but also out in nature, was something very special. Having horses around you from such a young age, you learn a lot from them – not just how to ride, but a lot of values.” Though this rare period at home is ostensibly downtime from the whirlwind pace of the year-long competition season, it’s also an important preparation for one of the biggest shows of her year: the London International Horse Show, a traditional pre-Christmas sweetener, newly relocated to the ExCel Centre, which combines top-level sport with holiday festivities – horseback Santa very much included.

Though Jodie stepped up to the five-star level – the highest in international showjumping – last year, this will be her first World Cup class, and that brings with it an enormous pressure: at just 22, and barely out of the youth rankings, she’ll be pitted against riders who’ve been at the top of their game for so long that their careers are older than she is. But this, she points out, is one of the things that makes her sport of choice such an extraordinary playing field. “There’s no other sport like it,” she says. “At 22, in most other sports I’d be in my prime or getting to it, and then I’d be thinking about retiring. But when you look at the likes of [British team stalwart] John Whitaker, who’s 67, or Norwegian rider Geir Gulliksen, who’s 62… I saw him in Prague last week, and he was telling me it’s going to be his 35th year competing at London! I grew up watching those riders, so to be competing against them now is extremely special – and extremely rare in sport.”

Putting herself in the position to be able to compete against Olympians more than twice her age, though, requires some sacrifice – and equestrian sport’s intensity necessitates many of the normal benchmarks of being a woman in her early twenties being put on hold. “The life balance is something I’m still working on, and that’s partly because I didn’t expect to be in the position I’m in so soon,” Jodie says. “It was just kind of this process by which I was given an opportunity to go to a show, and then it went well, and then another opportunity comes along, and you ride the wave.” Riding that wave meant that her original plan to go to university after earning three A stars in her A-levels was put on hold – though, in hindsight, she has no regrets about the decision.

Part of that growing up process? Leaving home – a not uncommon stepping stone after school, but one that saw Jodie relocate to the Netherlands in order to pursue the sport. She received a bursary to train there for six months through the Rolex Young Riders Academy, but once her training period came to an end, she worked on staying at the base of the Schröder brothers, themselves a powerhouse within the Dutch team. The move meant that she had to relocate to a rural neighbourhood, where she lives on her own – but it also allows her to circumvent the logistical difficulties of Brexit, which have made moving horses across the Channel a much tougher, longer process, and one that costs several times what it did prior to Britain’s departure from the EU.

Jodie, though, is eminently capable of turning those challenges into positives: “Being in a village means I don’t get immersed in the hustle and bustle that I do in London. It’s so easy to fill your schedule when you’re living in the city, and to feel you need to be everywhere all the time and seeing people constantly – but taking myself out of that and going into a slower way of life has allowed me to focus purely on my riding and being with the horses for now. That’s really nice. And the showjumping community is really close, too, so even when we’re travelling every week to shows, we’re always surrounded by people we know.

“Going through what went well or didn’t go well gives you perspective, because it’s so easy, when you’ve had a bad show, to fall into that spiral of thinking ‘I’ve had a rail down; I’m no good; I’m never going to jump clear’,” she says. “But analysing it and reflecting on it means that you can change that to, ‘okay, I had one down – but it’s because I didn’t have my horse moving forward enough, or I got too close to the fence’. You’re learning how not to have that fence down again – and actually, you learn the most from the bad days. The good days are just there to remind you that everything can come together, and to give you that confidence and motivation.” The journal – and the uniquely communal nature of the sport – provide a sense of stasis while Jodie travels the world with her horses. So, too, does the routine of riding – though it’s not always conducive to turning travel into a busman’s holiday. Competing as part of a show series such as the Global Champions Tour, which visits extraordinary locations such as Paris’s Champ de Mars, Miami Beach, and London’s Royal Hospital in Chelsea, allows her access to some of the world’s most beautiful cities – but it also comes with a gruelling schedule.