Carl Hester and Uthopia Photo: Kit Houghton/FEI
One answer could be that Carl started his career as an eventing rider and indeed has just bought an 5 year old horse, Beautiful Pleasure by For Pleasure, for British eventing rider Piggy French to campaign.
However the direct link to eventing with Uthopia is that the dark bay stallion by Metall who won team gold at the Rotterdam European Championships with Carl in August last year is owned by Carl and Irish eventing rider Sasha Stewart. Sasha has ridden and competed at World, European and Olympic level as a 3 Day Eventer for Ireland and is also no slouch in dressage, having competed up to and including Inter II.
Sasha’s sister, Jayne Doherty is also a top level eventer who is currently on the provisional squad for Ireland’s Olympic team with her two horses, The Only One and Ravenstar. I bet their dressage isn’t bad either
There have been rumours that a large offer has been made for Uthopia from Finland but that Carl has been busy raising additional funds to keep the horse. Hopefully this will be the case as we would all love to see them compete together on home soil at the Olympics
Don't worry, I was only joking about Uthopia becoming an eventing horse!
