Sadie Smith
WHEN we speak one dark winter’s evening in early December, Sadie Smith has just started working at Anne and Gertjan van Olst’s base in the Netherlands. This is where British Olympic team medallist Lottie Fry, who rode the van Olsts’ stallion Everdale to glory in Tokyo, is also based.
Before crossing the Channel, Sadie rode for Carl Hester for five years and trained a somewhat untrainable little horse, Keystone Dynamite, to grand prix, finishing fourth at the nationals with 71%, her career highlight.
Carl once said of Sadie, “She’s just like Charlotte [Dujardin]” and it was Carl who recently suggested the move to the van Olsts.
“He thought it would be good for me to get exposure in Europe and go to international shows, and have more opportunities to ride different horses,” Sadie, 31, explains.
She speaks so fondly of her time at Carl’s and the support that he and Charlotte gave that it must have been a
