One of Britain’s most renowned riders, breeders and trainers, Jennie Loriston-Clarke was honoured with the prestigious Meritoire Lifetime Achievement award at the 2019 British Breeders awards dinner on Saturday 12 January. We take a look at some of the many highlights of Jennie’s career, and some things you may not have known about her.
1. Jennie has represented Britain at four Olympic Games. She competed at Munich 1972 and Montreal 1976 with Kadett, Los Angeles 1984 with Prince Consort and Seoul 1988 riding Dutch Gold. She also rode at the alternative Olympics in 1980, as well as two world championships in 1978 and 1986 — winning individual bronze with Dutch Courage in 1978 — and the first ever World Equestrian Games, in Stockholm in 1990.
2. Jennie and her older siblings learnt to ride cross-country on a 12.2hh Exmoor pony called Skipper, who was bought off the moor.
3. Before focusing her career on dressage, Jennie was successful in point-to-pointing and eventing, and proved her versatility: in 1983, she won the Midland Bank Championships (eventing) aboard Dutch Gold, before taking him to an international dressage show at Rotterdam the following day.
4. Jennie’s mother, Anne Bullen, who founded the Catherston Stud in 1949, was also a prolific equestrian artist, illustrating books by Monica Dickena and the Pullein-Thompson sisters.
5. In 1979, Jennie was awarded an MBE for her contribution to equestrianism, and in 2006 she became the first person to receive the British Horse Society’s Queen’s Award for Equestrianism, which her sister Jane Holderness-Roddam also received, three years later.
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6. Jennie was the first Brit to be invited to judge at the World Breeding Championships in Verden, and in 2011 she broke her foot while acting as president of the ground jury at the show. She collided with a step just before the trot-up, but despite being warned she would be unable to judge, Jennie returned to the ring with her foot strapped up.
7. She took on the role of chairman of British Dressage from 2007 until 2013, when she was asked to become President of British Dressage, a position she still holds today.
8. Both Jennie’s daughters, Lizzie Murray and Anne Dicker, have competed internationally for Britain riding home-bred Catherston horses.
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