Jane Holderness-Roddam is the worthy winner of the 2025 Horse & Hound Lifetime Achievement Award, after her unparalleled contribution to the equestrian industry.
Jane’s name was announced to huge applause, at the Horse & Hound Awards ceremony – held in partnership with NAF and Agria – at Dallas Burston Polo Club this evening.
H&H magazine and eventing editor Pippa Roome said: “Jane’s story with Our Nobby is the stuff of every child’s dreams – to take our pony all the way to a Badminton win and the Olympics – and she has gone on to become a hugely respected figure in equestrianism, her influence touching so many different areas to which she has generously given her time and expertise.
“She has always been unfailingly kind and friendly to me whenever I see her at events and it is a huge honour for H&H to give her this Lifetime Achievement award as she retires from running West Kington Stud.”
Jane was born into the Bullen family in Dorset in 1948, and grew up surrounded by horses and ponies at her parents’ Catherston Stud, alongside three brothers – Anthony, Michael, and Charlie – and two sisters, Jennie and Sarah.
It was a childhood of riding ponies bareback on the beach, swimming with them in the sea, hunting, taking part in Pony Club activities and learning everything about how to care for them, but the Bullen children also showed ponies – those bred by her parents and others belonging to owners – at the highest level.
As she writes in her wonderful book, The Galloping Nurse, Jane made her competitive debut aged 31/2 to win the cup for the leading-rein class at Richmond.
At the age of seven, Jane and Jennie and three ponies (Royal Show, Criban Bumble and Coed Coch Pryderi) were flown by Miss Stubbings, who owned many of the ponies they rode, to compete in New York at Madison Square Gardens and Toronto’s Royal Winter Fair, and the spark was lit for an international career in equestrianism for both girls.
Jane’s first taste of eventing was as part of the Cattistock branch of the Pony Club’s area team – which was almost entirely made up of Bullens – on a pony called Little Robin.
Our Nobby and Jane Holderness-Roddam (née Bullen).
When Jane was 11, the family moved from Dorset to Didmarton in Gloucestershire, and the Catherston Stud was reduced from about 150 ponies to 20. The Duke of Beaufort gave the Bullens permission to ride in the park at Badminton, which was just a mile from their new home, and Jane had her first look at the formidable fences of the three-day event he had founded there. A year later her brother Mike rode two horses at Badminton, finishing ninth and 16th, and that year (1960) he became the first member of the Bullen family to ride at the Olympics, which were in Rome. Jane and Jennie, under her married name of Loriston-Clarke, were to follow him in time.
Also in 1960, Jane’s parents paid £150 for a 14.2hh thoroughbred – “thin and scruffy-looking, with a ewe neck – called Our Nobby. Seven years later, Jane and Our Nobby made their first attempt at Badminton, for which Jane, who was training to be a nurse at the Middlesex Hospital, got fit by running up and down the wards and skipping on the flat roof of the hospital at 6.30am. The pair finished fifth and were short-listed for the European Championships at Punchestown, then finished third at Burghley that autumn.
The following year, in 1968, Jane and Nobby achieved every young event rider’s dream and won Badminton and were selected for the Mexico Olympics. Jane was just 20, and she was the first British woman to compete in three-day eventing at the Olympics. In extraordinary conditions of high altitude, extreme humidity and flooding, the British team won gold – Jane was the first woman to win an Olympic eventing medal, and returned home a national hero.
Our Nobby was retired after the Olympics, but a few years later, in 1976, Jane won Burghley on Warrior, owned by Suzie Howard, and they scored at Badminton in 1978. They were also part of the gold medal-winning British team at the European Championships at Burghley in 1977.
In 1974 she married Tim Holderness-Roddam, and they moved to Church Farm, West Kington, Wiltshire, where they ran a very successful stud. Sadly, Tim died in 2021, and was much missed in eventing.
Jane may have stopped nursing after her marriage, but life continued at pace, including some fascinating trips overseas as a lady-in-waiting to the Princess Royal, running the London Marathon for the Fortune Centre of Riding Therapy, and doing a tandem skydive to raise thousands of pounds for the Riding for the Disabled Association (RDA).
Jane has devoted huge energy to her many roles in equestrianism, her chairmanship of British Eventing coming at a particularly challenging time, through a series of deaths in the sport and the onset of foot-and-mouth. She has been president of British Eventing, of the Fortune Centre of Riding Therapy, the British Equestrian Trade Society and the Caspian Horse Society. She is a former national chairman of the RDA, and a former council chairman of the British Equestrian Federation. She is author of more than 25 equestrian books. In 2009 she was presented with the Queen’s Award for Equestrianism.
Jane has given exceptional service to equestrian sport as a judge, steward and official, much valued for her kindness, her wisdom, her positivity and her friendliness.
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