Carl Hester
An openly gay rider from the tiny island of Sark, he won Olympic gold in London 2012 and trained the great Charlotte Dujardin.
Carl Hester was born in Cambridgeshire and raised by his mother and stepfather. From the age of four he grew up on Sark, a tiny Channel Island without cars, where he learned to ride on donkeys. He went to school in Guernsey.
At 19 he took a job at a riding therapy centre in England and on its skewbald mare Jolly Dolly won the national young dressage riders’ championship. In 1992 he rode at the Olympic Games in Barcelona, at the time the youngest British rider ever to compete in Olympic dressage. He later built up his own yard in Gloucestershire.
Hester became one of the most influential figures in British dressage – as a rider, trainer and breeder. He discovered the young Charlotte Dujardin and trained her and the horse Valegro, who went on to dominate the sport. At the 2012 Olympic Games in London, Hester rode Uthopia in the British team that won Britain’s first ever Olympic gold medal in dressage; Dujardin also won individual gold. The year before, he had won European team gold and two individual silver medals. He has competed at several further Olympic Games.
Hester is openly gay, in a sport long dominated by an image of tradition and conservatism. He was appointed MBE in 2013 for services to equestrianism. In 2024 it was announced that a film would be made about his life.