Horseytalk.net Special Interview

Dane Rawlins

You either love him or you hate him.

He is either a truly dedicated horseman, who has devoted his life to promoting the arts, discipline and skills of dressage or a lucky jockey riding above his station.

He is either a great champion of the sport of dressage determined to push it into the lime-light and the public gaze or the ultimate outsider trying to batter down the doors of the dressage establishment and stick a bomb up one or other of their passages

He is either a man with a vision to make Great Britain the centre of the dressage world or a showman with an eye to a quick buck.

Either way, nobody can deny that he has done more than anyone to turn the once staid, boring, middle-aged world of dressage, once the preserve of the seriously, impoverished middle-classes, into one of the most popular, fastest-growing sports in the country with well over 30,000 unaffiliated riders and around 12,000 affiliated members to the governing body, British Dressage.

In fact, when you look at Dane Rawlins, who his doting fans claim is to dressage what Steve McQueen was to motor-bikes, it’s almost impossible to deny that you see a man who was made for dressage and dressage was made for him. Look closer and you see a man whose life virtually reflects a dressage competition at the highest Grand Prix level

Warm up. Outside the ring.
This is Dane pre-riding, pre-dressage.

He was born – Please. No comments – on April 1 1956 in 78 Saltoun Road, Brixton, South London. His father was a runner or a messenger for the London Stock Exchange. He was also a boxer. He won Amateur Open Internationals. He then started training young boxers.

Dane’s early life was boxing. He was not only a boxer himself, even though he was still young, he moved in the world of boxing. Because of all his father’s contacts, he knew all the major boxers of his time, many of them like Freddie Mills, Dave Chandler and Henry Cooper, household names. Evenings, he’d be at the famous Café Royal in London’s Regent Street for grand, gala charity boxing matches. Sunday mornings, he’d be at the Thomas a Beckett pub in the Old Kent Road, another boxing landmark.

Because he lived in South London and because he moved in boxing circles, he also came across many of the infamous gang leaders, crooks and thugs of the time such as the deadly Kray Brothers not to mention the Richardsons.

"In fact," he says, "The Richardsons were also respectable businessmen. They had a big company, Metal Trading Limited. There was no need for them to do all this stealing and killing. They didn’t have to. But it was in their blood."

Enter. Salute the Judges.
Dane enters the world of riding.

"My sister wanted to go riding. My mother at the time did all the books for Dickie Dear. He owned Dickie Dear’s Bargain Arcade in Brixton. He was just like Arthur Dailey. He had the trilby, the Jag, everything. He knew the girl who ran Dulwich Riding School on the common. He fixed for my sister and I to go there. My sister didn’t like it. I did. I just thought it was so fantastic. The riding. The horses. Everything. It changed my life. If it hadn’t have been for the Dulwich Riding School, I would probably have gone on to be a boxer. Who knows what would have happened?"

"Any way, I used to go there every Saturday morning. I used to run there. Six-miles there and six-miles back. It kept me fit for boxing. It also kept me fit for riding. I did the mucking out. I did everything. I remember, there were two other boys there at the time. Greig Powell. He is now one of the leading stunt co-ordinators in the world. He does all the Harry Potter films. There was also Graham Crowther. He is also a stunt co-ordinator. He’s worked on the Indiana Jones , the James Bond films, everything.”

Extended trot
Dane now wants to extend his knowledge of horses and the horse world.
He goes to Hull University. But, he says, he leaves before he was asked to leave. He gets a job riding at Beverley racecourse. One of his boxing contacts owns a string of pubs and a Hunting Yard in West Kent. He goes there for two years. He runs the yard. He continues to ride whenever and as often as he can.

Two half passes
Germany and Canada.
“I  loved jumping. I loved dressage. I loved everything about horses,” he says.”Then one day Domini Morgan, who was then one of the top dressage riders, said to me, If you want to learn dressage, you’d better go to Germany. I couldn’t speak German and I didn’t know anything about dressage. But I went to Germany. I got a job. I started to learn German. I also started being trained by Georg Theodorescu, who was, in fact, Romanian but one of the top dressage trainers in Germany. I went there for three months and I stayed for three years.

<< Domini Morgan and San Fernando in their lap of honour at Wembly after winning the Dressage Horse of the Year for the fifth consecutive year 1969-1973

“After that I went to one of the top dressage yards in Canada. I competed at Grand Prix level. I won the Ontario Championships. I became the Canadian Reserve Champion.

“Looking back on it now, if somebody at the time had said to me, 'Be a show jumper', I’d have become a show jumper. I didn’t particularly want to become a dressage rider, I wanted to be with horses. It’s just the way things worked out.”

Halt and reinback
Back in the UK after being away for almost four-years, things almost came to a halt.

Dressage was practically unkown in the country. There was little opportunity for a Canadian Reserve Champion to start a career let alone make a living.
Dane’s boxing contacts came to his rescue.
“George Cottle, who used to be a good middleweight fighter, contacted me. He owned a number of pubs. He also had a yard in Kent where he kept his hunters. He offered me the house and stables. He said, If you feed and run my hunters, you can do what you want with the rest of the yard. I was made. I looked after his hunters. I got horses in. I trained them. I sold them. I also went back to dressage and trained and trained and trained.”

Extended trot
Dane now began to extend himself.

Dressage at the time was very exclusive, almost the sole preserve of the rich. It wasn’t even considered a sport. More a pastime for gentle-folk while the lower orders played football. Dane was determined to change all that. He wanted to make it accessible to everybody. He wanted to popularise it. He wanted to turn it into a sport. Together with Egon Von Greyerz, he took his ideas to the British Dressage establishment. They turned him down flat. It was their’s. They didn’t want anybody else interfering with what they were doing. Dane and Egon went away and formed the British Young Riders Dressage Scheme or BYRDS, as it is known today. They also, at the same time, established the British Dressage premiere league.
Both were virtually an instant success.

Passage. Piaf. Passage
Dane decided the last thing he wanted to do was Passage. Piaf. Passage.

Dressage events were usually held, not surprisingly, at Goodwood House under the auspices of the Duke and Duchess of Richmond. He decided he wanted to change all that. He organised the first popular, mass dressage championships at Lingfield racecourse with no less than eight rings, all running at the same time. They had over 500 entries.
He had broken the mould of British Dressage for ever.

Extended walk
Now he decided to extend himself still further.
He moved to Ardingly and ran bigger and more popular shows there.

 

Passage. Piaf. Passage.
Dane could now see he was on to something.

There was a growing demand for more and more, popular dressage events. He didn’t want to stand still or, rather trot on the spot, he went to see Douglas Bunn, who was beginning to establish Hickstead as a world-class centre for show jumping. “I went to see Douglas, “ says Dane. “I said to him, You used to run dressage here, why don’t you do it again. Doug said to me, If you want to do it, you do it.”

Canter
From then on, things galloped ahead rather than cantered.

“We’ve been running dressage at Hickstead now for 16-years. Every year, it gets bigger and bigger. We’ve just had our best year ever. We had over 3,000 people seated watching the events. We had television. We were on-line. We’ve been getting tens of thousands of hits. It’s far and away the biggest dressage event in the country.

Two time changes
But, as big and as popular as it is, Hickstead is not the only thing in Dane’s life.

There are two other things he likes to concentrate on: his own riding and training other riders.
Somehow manages to ride every day. His favourite is Sydney, a mare, owned by Lord and Lady Harris, whose roots, like his, stretch back to South London. Lord Harris comes from Peckham. He started with a single carpet shop and ended up running the biggest chain of carpet shops in the country. Lady Harris is from Streatham. She used to be head girl at the South London School of Equitation. Dane is hoping that Sydney will take him to the Olympics in 2012. “She’s good enough,” he says.
As for training, he not only teaches in this country but also in Europe. He also makes regular training trips to the United States and Canada.

Extended canter
To extend his range and area of activities

and to ensure he keeps up with his ever-growing string of commitments, he has both a pilot’s licence and a helicopter licence. In a year, he estimates he spends hundreds of hours flying both in this country and in Europe.

Zig Zag. Half pass.
When not zig-zagging between all his various commitments,

Dane has also found time to become a qualified AI technician. Over the years he has worked with the Equine Research Unit at Newmarket on their various embryo transplant projects.

One time changes
Having launched BYRDS,

he now feels the time has come to start a European Young Riders Championship.

Two pirouettes
While, at the same time, going round and round in circles finding sponsors

for all his dressage projects, he somehow also manages to teach and train other riders and carry out all his other activities. Some people say that one of his more famous pirouettes was his opinion on the 2012 Equestrian Olympics being held at Greenwich. At first, he was against everything. The location. The small 150 acre site. Parking facilities. The surrounding traffic infrastructure. The fact local people would be denied the use of their park for over a year before the Games even began. The wholly inadequate assessment they carried out at Hickstead. And so on.

“That was then,” he says. “Now is now. The decision has been taken. I’ll do everything I can to ensure the Games is a huge success
 

Extended trot
At the moment he is extending himself in two directions.

First, he is practising extended trots and everything else with Sydney to try and secure himself in the British dressage team for the 2012 Olympics.
What are his chances?
“Watch this space,” he says.
Second, he is preparing himself for his greatest- ever project. He wants to hold the World Equestrian Games at Hickstead in 2022.
What are his chances?
“Watch this space,” he says again.

Piaf. Passage. Halt. Salute.

It’s only when Dane Rawlins completes his dressage test and comes to a halt on that centre line that he seems to standstill.
Well, for a few minutes anyway.