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Regal Realm: from Australian stock horse to Badminton winner and world champion

Martha Terry Martha Terry

    • From herding cattle in Australia to winning world eventing gold, this headstrong horse – who didn’t do Polos or affection – became Lucinda Green’s “most talented of all”, as Martha Terry discovers

    LUCINDA GREEN has had many beloved champions.

    Six Badminton victors, seven gold and five silver-medal winners. And while they all had their fortes and foibles, Regal Realm – her fifth Badminton winner and 1982 world champion – is the horse she puts “in the position of the most talented of all”.

    Regal Realm’s story begins 10,000 miles away from the scenes of his great victories, under the fierce Australian sun on the dusty Comboglong cattle station in New South Wales. Bar the brief and rather brutal invasion of humans into his life for branding and castration, the young thoroughbred spent the first two years of his life almost untouched, roaming the vast outback in search of food and water, and developing the tough, independent spirit that would later become his hallmark.

    This report can also be read in this week’s Horse & Hound magazine, on sale Thursday 29 April

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    Martha Terry
    Martha Terry

    H&H features editor
    Martha is an experienced journalist who is mad-keen on horses and dogs. Her reporting CV includes the Paris Olympics, European championships, Aachen World Equestrian Festival and World Cup finals. After growing up with assorted liver and white springer spaniels, she enjoyed 14 years with two rescue dogs. Now, her constant companion is Fidget, an extremely energetic and habitually muddy black and white springer. Martha has written on topics as diverse as a top horse’s clone to the best GPS trackers for dogs, as well as equestrian and rural matters for Country Life, The Field, The Times, The Spectator and The Telegraph alongside Horse & Hound.
    Martha Terry