A baptism of fire

IF a horse came out of one of the late Badminton-winner Sheila Wilcox’s boxes with straw in its tail, 10 pence had to go in a box; stable floors had to be clean enough to eat off; summer sheets were ironed and her honesty was startlingly refreshing – she had no qualms in telling a working pupil that her hair was greasy. But two years spent on Sheila’s Cotswold yard was, says Olympian Mary King, the making of her.

“[She] was a perfectionist,” the now 58-year-old remembers in her autobiography. “The awful thing was that if she was critical of someone else, you couldn’t help but be relieved that you were getting a break.”

Fast forward more than 40 years, and the road to the top is often no smoother for those with their hearts set on a life working with horses; eye-wateringly early starts, bruised muscles and equally battered