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Horseytalk.net Special Interview
Mary King

britisheventingchampionships.com

Former camp site loo cleaner and daughter set to reign supreme at Rio

MARY KING & IMPERIAL CAVALIER at “The Chess Table”

If Mary King, one of the freshly-minted crop of Olympian MBE’s, makes it to Rio for her seventh Olympics in the GB eventing team, she could face interesting competition from a very local source.

MARY KING &
IMPERIAL CAVALIER
at “The Chess Table” >>

Same village, same house, same gene-pool. Her daughter, Emily, 16, is already a European junior silver medalist in the same sport as her mother and shows no sign of setting her standards at “modest”.

“My main aims are to compete at the Olympics, win a gold medal and be world number one,” said the teenager nicely but firmly

What is it with these Kings? Historically, their namesakes liked to rule by divine right leading to all manner of excesses and executions but the Kings of Salcombe Regis, a little village in Devon near Sidmouth, are descendants of the local verger (Mary’s father) and her mother, Jill, continues the parish care when she is not driving the 19 tonne horse box around Europe. “People do look a bit surprised when you get out of the cab in your skirt at a petrol pump,” admitted Jill, who is 76.

King’s is an extraordinary tale of graft, competence and persistence abetted by her mother and inherited by her daughter. Three generations whose finest hour may come if she becomes the first woman in British history to compete at seven Olympics. (She shares the honour at the moment with Tessa Sanderson on six.) If that were to be augmented by the, admittedly unlikely, event of her then 20-year-old daughter claiming a place on the same team, historical precedents would tumble.

“Well, Emily riding in Rio would be a wonderful thing, if it happened,” said Mary. “But I think 2016 is going to come a bit quick for Em unless she’s very lucky and finds an amazing horse she clicks with. The fact is that experience seems to count in eventing . It’s rare that a young rider shines among the seniors, but it’s her dream. And nothing is going to stop her dreaming.”

A measure of the would-be feat is kindly supplied by royalty. Princess Anne and King’s teammate and fellow Olympic silver medalist, Zara Phillips, can both claim to be Olympians. Another mother-daughter combo. But their appearances were 36 years apart. It is the simultaneous nature of King situation that makes it so compelling, and all the more possible when it becomes clear that Mary has no intention of stopping any time soon.

Despite breaking her neck in 2001, she retains her nerve in typically-unfussy style and gleefully represented the Saga demographic on the GB Olympic team when she competed at Greenwich Park in the summer on Imperial Cavalier owned by Sue and Eddie Davies at the age of 51.

“It was a huge feeling of relief when we won the silver in the summer. It would have been awful to come away without a medal. But obviously part of me – having won bronze in Beijing and silver in Athens – wanted to complete the set in London.” She helped her chances with a career-best dressage test and a clear round in the showjumping which made Emily, watching in the crowd, uncharacteristically and proudly tearful.

But the Germans won, a common occurrence in the equestrian ring. “So I’m just going to have to keep going for another 4 years and get my gold in Rio,” said King flatly. “I would have kept going anyway to be honest. I love it. Why give up?” Presumably she is of a mind to keep going to 2020? “Oh my poor husband,” she said. But she didn’t say No..

“Yes, I’ve had falls including the neck one. That was just riding a young horse which bucked vigorously and unseated me. When I was younger the falls were harder to take mentally. I did go through a phase of nearly losing my nerve when a had a couple in a row. I wasn’t experienced. I struggled a bit. But I got through that and now I just accept what may happen.”

“I don’t worry about Emily riding. If she makes a mistake I know she’s on good horses that aren’t going to fall over in a hurry. She’s quite competent. I’ve also learnt to keep my mouth shut. I was always quite determined not to be one of those horsey mothers you see at Pony Club shouting at their children. Telling them off when they don’t win. The last thing I’d want to be is like that.”

Emily’s grandmother is quietly of the opinion that her granddaughter has “got it all on a plate, in a way” with her five horses and sponsors, including the clothing company Joules. Jill ruefully remembers how different it was when she walked miles round the country lanes, leading the vicar’s vengeful pony with her ecstatic 4-year-old daughter on top. “It nearly took my fingers off. One day it caught a great lump of tummy. Oh, it did hurt. Put me off horses even more.”

And that is another extraordinary element of the King saga. When Mary decided that horses were the thing (unstintingly from the age of three) there was no precedent in the family, and more pertinently, no money. “So I sold horse manure for 50p a bag, did a butcher’s delivery round three mornings a week, cleaned the camp site loos (a very well paid job, but the worst one), did a couple of gardening jobs and visited elderly ladies as a home help.”

So the annuls await. In four years time, a verger’s daughter who once couldn’t afford her own wheelbarrow may find herself an Olympian Dame. “I don’t think I’d deal with calling Mum that,” said Emily after thought. “And I wouldn’t curtsey either.”

Interview sourced from britisheventingchampionships.com