‘Winning Burghley has changed my life, but it hasn’t changed my ambition’: why Gemma Stevens is set to be more competitive than ever

“Everywhere I go, people are saying that I made them cry,” says Gemma Stevens, reflecting a couple of weeks after her win at Burghley in September.

“Someone at Blenheim even shouted to me, ‘I was doing my ironing and you made me cry,’ which was hilarious. It really is the most amazing feeling and very satisfying.”

It’s not surprising, perhaps, that Gemma makes people cry – we can join in her emotions because, in an age of media-trained, sometimes bland, sportspeople, Gemma shares so much. Whether she’s taking the trophy or falling off, Gemma tells the press how she feels and so the fans really become part of the journey.

The obvious story that came out of Burghley was her comeback from devastating elimination at the World Championships in Aachen three weeks before. But there’s so much more to this – Gemma (née Tattersall) is 41 years old and, behind the capsule of the month of the worlds and Burghley, is 19 years of riding at five-star and all the associated depths of graft, learning, triumph and heartbreak.

Gemma was, of course, a five-star winner before Burghley, having taken the one-off five-star at Bicton in 2021 with the same horse, Chilli Knight (Alfie). The event was the Burghley replacement as the world tried to recover from Covid-19.

The pair beat some serious combinations, including five-star victors Piggy March with Vanir Kamira and Tim Price on Ringwood Sky Boy. Did Gemma feel she’d really won at the top level, or was she frustrated it wasn’t actually Burghley?

“A lot of both of those,” she says frankly. “It was cool, obviously, to win a five-star. It was
a five-star and we did beat some really good horses, and the cross-country course was tough. There were lots of big fences and it was hilly. The showjumping was a serious track and Alfie held his own in the dressage.

“I did feel that we had won a five-star, but there was definitely a feeling that it wasn’t one of the big ones, one of the big Bs. That has always been my dream. It’s always been my dream to win both of them, to be honest. So Bicton was definitely a box tick, but at the same time, there was more to do.”

And now, having won a big B, have her goals changed?

“It’s changed my life. I feel like I’ve done what I wanted to do and won a big one,” she says. “But it hasn’t changed my ambition. My ambition has always, always been to try to win the big events and be a championship rider. That’s definitely not changed one little bit. I still have huge ambitions and want to keep going.”

Meanwhile, the final few events of the season beckon, then a holiday in the Maldives with husband Gary.

“I feel great. I feel really positive about the future with these horses that I have coming up behind Alfie. I feel satisfied and excited to have a little rest, then to look forward to what is to come next year and the following year,” she says.

Gemma Stevens’ path to the Burghley trophy

Gemma’s five-star career started with a “completely weird” grey called Jesters Quest, who she took on as a catch ride for the CCI2* (now CCI3*-L) at Windsor in 2004.

“He galloped with his head really high and couldn’t do flying changes. I literally went around the course and thought, ‘Well, if I jump fence one, I’ll jump fence two,’” she remembers.

The pair went on to win two young rider team gold medals and completed Badminton and Burghley.

More five-star rides followed, including, of course, Gemma’s horse of a lifetime, Arctic Soul. An ex-racehorse, he took her to the podium at both Badminton and Burghley and a world team gold medal in 2018.

“He taught me so much, about horsemanship, feel, management – and bravery, speed, everything, cross-country. He was a really funny-looking thoroughbred, with his neck coming out of the bottom of his shoulder,” she says. “But there was always something about him that made you think, ‘This horse will turn into something.’

“He was always a good jumper, wanted to be careful and make a nice shape
over his fences.

“The first time I went cross-country on him, at Lincoln in March, I was like, ‘Holy moly, this is a cool horse.’”

The course of Gemma’s life was changed when some 20 years ago, she met Chris Stone, the businessman and horse enthusiast who first came to the eventing world’s attention when he bought the stallion Chilli Morning as a potential London 2012 horse.

“I rode and sold a cheeky little Connemara for Chris and his wife Lisa, then I started going to teach Chris and his daughter Alex on her Prince Philip Cup ponies,” says Gemma. “Then I got brave and sent them a letter and asked if they would buy me a horse.”

The Stones had a horse called Nyali Beach, who had fallen out of love with eventing.

“Chris said, ‘If you can get this horse to win an event, I’ll buy you another one.’

“So we took him right back to basics. My mum helped me. We jumped cross-poles for a month and we got him sweet again,” says Gemma.

She went on to pilot Nyali Beach to win the CIC2* (now CCI3*-L) at Little Gatcombe,
where the Stones received their trophy from the Princess Royal (“that meant a lot
to them”).

The Stones soon invited Gemma to base herself at their West Sussex yard, Tattleton, and she’s been there ever since, with the Stones her principal owners as well as close friends.

Eventers, broodmares, home-breds and embryos

These days, Tattleton is home to a “very big system, situation, everything”, as Gemma
puts it.

There are some 50 horses involved, including Gemma’s seven to nine event horses and five showjumpers, plus a host of home-breds from “cooking” embryos to six-year-olds.

The broodmares include Gemma’s Rio Olympic ride Quicklook V, double three-star (now four-star) winner Chico Bella P and Alfie’s dam, Kings Gem.

Mary King bred Kings Gem, by Rock King out of the Louella Inschallah II mare Kings Mistress, who formed the basis of Mary’s own successful breeding programme.

“She was bought for me by the Stones as a nine-year-old who had done Blenheim and it was a big deal that someone was willing to buy me a horse of that stature,” says Gemma.

“She was some cross-country machine – a serious galloper and that’s been passed on to her babies.”

Gemma was under-25 national champion and completed Pau five-star on Kings Gem, while the Stones bred from her via embryo transfer. She and Chilli Morning produced eight full siblings.

“Just like with any siblings – horse, human, dog – they’re all very different, but they do have similarities in that they’re all gallopers and they can all jump. Also, they’re slow developers and don’t look much as four-, five-, even six-year-olds,” says Gemma.

Chilli Knight exemplified this. He certainly didn’t promise two five-star wins as a youngster.

“He was the most unassuming young horse ever. He was not a great shape, he’s only 16 hands maximum, he’s got pigeon toes. And when he was a young horse, honestly, he was hilarious. He just used to run out at the jumps all the time, cock his jaw, then trip over the side of the school,” Gemma remembers.

But she thought, “this horse is actually really cool cross-country” when he was seventh at Le Lion’s seven-year-old championships and he ran in his first five-star at nine.

On the flat, the fact he “shuffles rather than trots” means he has to have a “clear round” to nail a sub-30 at five-star, but he’s trainable and unaffected by atmosphere.

“Also, he’s got such belief. Even though he’s not particularly great at dressage, he actually thinks he is great, so he goes in the ring and he gives that impression,” says Gemma.

“He’s such a smiley little horse that he’s endearing, and we pick up marks because you can clearly see he’s trying and he’s so well trained. He’s relaxed and he does everything I ask of him.”

Gemma Stevens’ Burghley win built on “years of partnership”

An athlete who understands her own strengths and weaknesses, Gemma isn’t big-headed in saying that she is an accurate rider in terms of placing a horse to a take-off spot. Alfie has never known anything different and those “years and years of friendship and partnership” came to the fore across country at Burghley.

“When things went very wrong at the Leaf Pit, that was him paying me back for all the times I’ve put him right, and him saying, ‘Do you know what, Mum? Thank you for all that. I’ve got your back here,’” she says.

At one-day events, the cross-country jumps aren’t big enough to back Alfie off.

“It’s not much fun. He thinks he’s King Kong and shouldn’t be listening to me at all,” says Gemma, explaining that more recently, she and her the team have worked out and planned around the fact this is worse if he isn’t stabled on site.

“At Thoresby, he was nearly impossible to ride – all I could see was his white face and I had his ears up my nostrils,” she says.

In his four completed five-stars before Burghley, Alfie had only once had more than one showjump down – but five rolled poles at Badminton the year before made some wonder if Gemma could close this one out. What many didn’t know was that Alfie was well below par that day.

“He was sound and finished the cross-country well, but what we didn’t realise was that he’d had a lung bleed, so he was incredibly tired,” she says. “He was not right on that Sunday, because he’s not a ‘giver upper’. He’s always been a fighter.”

Gemma and her team gave Alfie time and care, not running him again last year.

She says: “I don’t usually do this, but at Burghley I wanted to get on him for literally
15 minutes after the trot-up and see how he felt. We put him through a little double and he pricked his ears, shook his head and wanted to go to the fence. It was a case of, ‘Thank God’, because he didn’t do that that day at Badminton; he was completely flat in the warm-up.”

By the time she entered the arena, Gemma had three fences in hand, but she didn’t need them and – as at Bicton in 2021 – she sealed the title with a showjumping clear, on her dressage score.

“What an absolutely crazy sport,” says Gemma, reflecting on the turnaround from Aachen to Burghley. She’s not wrong. Isn’t that why we love it?

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