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.