‘You can be what you want to be’: farewell to trotter who became grade A showjumper, aged 34

The owner of a little French trotter who “wasn’t built for jumping” has paid tribute to her horse of a lifetime, whose heart took him to grade A, after his death aged 34.

Gemma Dickens had to say goodbye to Oakley’s Ace this month, after a career of wins across the country and a long and happy retirement. The combination won over £11,000 together; their victories included the Hickstead novice derby, the Ken Beeston Memorial Trophy and multiple classes and finals at Scope and the British Showjumping amateur and veteran championships.

“He was imported as a French trotter and he became a superstar showjumper who people respected,” Gemma said. “You can be what you want to be.”

Gemma bought “Duo” as an unbacked three-year-old, “just off the boat from France”; she viewed him as her farrier told her he was good to shoe, and she should go and have a look.

“He was a pure-bred French trotter and when we went to see him, he couldn’t canter, only trot,” she said. “At the start, if we rode out in the fields, he would just trot at the speed the others were galloping, as that’s all he knew.”

Gemma was jumping BS junior classes at the time, and bought Duo as a Pony Club horse. As he learned to canter and jump, he excelled at and enjoyed these activities, including open tetrathlon and hunting.

But he also excelled over coloured poles; jumping up to 1.30m and winning and being placed wherever he went. Gemma remembers one early trip to an SEIB winter novice qualifier, at which tickets to the Royal International Horse Show were on offer.

“We got laughed at when we went all the way to the qualifier venue with one horse,” she said. “I said ‘Yes, but I’m going to qualify this one’, and he jumped three rounds up to 1.30m and won it.”

Then, after Gemma went to Hartpury for a degree in equine science, he had some time off as he “wasn’t right”. When he failed to improve, vets investigated and thought it likely he had sustained a whiplash injury as a youngster and that this had been exacerbated. He underwent a year of monthly osteopathy treatment.

“But after that, he still ‘skipped’ on a circle,” Gemma said. “The vets thought he’d learned to do it, and as I was still at Hartpury, I used to watch the therapy sessions, and applied those techniques to him. I spent months rehabbing him.”

Gemma then had to spend more time on groundwork as Duo had become scared of poles, possibly associating them with his previous discomfort, until “he realised he was better”.

“I started jumping him again, unaffiliated, in about 2009, and he won the UK Riders championship,” she said. “That was when the amateur BS classes were getting popular, so we started doing those and he won several times at the Aintree finals.

“He was a bit older by then so we did smaller classes but speed was his forte; he would go flat out and jump, and in a jump-off, if I was leaning slightly the way I wanted to go, he’d land and turn – to the point I once took out a wing with my foot in a final! The only times he didn’t win were because I made an error.”

Duo and Gemma also won at the Vale View arena eventing finals, and at the Sportjumping final, where because they were not well known, their odds were high – “And I won more betting on myself than for winning the actual competition, because he smashed it!” she said.

“He used to hate being anywhere in the lap of honour but at the front; he couldn’t comprehend being further back so he would get really strong, because why would he be anywhere else!”

Duo’s last show was the 2018 Aintree amateur championships, at which he was placed. He and Gemma’s other top horse Larius moved to the home she had bought with an eye on their retiring there.

“He and Larius were together 25 years, until Larius was put to sleep about 18 months ago,” she said. “He had a great retirement for seven years, then age caught up with him. Spring had sprung but on 2 March he decided he was too tired to carry on, so we let him go in the sunshine. It was sad as I’d thought he’d have another summer but it was time to make the decision. In some ways it was a harder call than with Larius but both were equally heartbreaking.

“They’re both buried here; next to the gallops – we’ll have a bench put there in their memory – so they can see the view.”

Asked what she would say to Duo, Gemma said: “Thank you for the memories. I couldn’t afford videos and photos of them most of the time so most of what I achieved is in my head, but I’ve got those memories.

“But the biggest take-away is that you don’t have to have a well-bred horse, as long as you’ve got the heart. He wanted to jump and wanted to win and he genuinely loved it.”

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