Ginny Elliot

One of the first female Olympic medallists in eventing, Ginny Elliot also claimed three consecutive European titles to earn her place among the sport’s greats, discovers Andrea Oakes

- Andrea Oakes

FEW have ridden across country with the panache of Ginny Elliot, the petite eventer whose distinctive purple colours blazed a trail around the sport’s toughest tracks. Yet Ginny delivered not just style, but substance. During an astonishing decade, she dominated the international scene – claiming multiple Olympic, World and European Championship medals alongside a Badminton hat-trick and five Burghley wins.

“We hit a real purple patch in the 1980s,” she recalls. “I’d had a tough time but, thankfully, everything suddenly clicked.”

She certainly made it look effortless. Fellow eventers admired her, spectators adored her and no pony-mad youngster’s bedroom was complete without posters of Priceless, Night Cap and Master Craftsman on the walls. But the polished performances came after an arduous climb to the top.

Ginny, whose maiden name was Holgate and first married name was Leng, was born in Malta, in 1955. Her father was a Royal Marine so she spent much of her childhood abroad, with spells at school in the UK.

“My interest in horses grew from my mother [Heather]’s side, as she and my grandfather [Ewart Rice] had always been into showing and polo,” explains Ginny, who started riding at three and whose first proper pony was a Welsh Mountain mare called Misty. “Grandpa had a passion for buying horses. One day he arrived with a foal he had bought for me, for £35, from Five Lanes Cattle Market in Cornwall.”

The colt, christened Dubonnet, would play a pivotal role in Ginny’s success.