FAMILY TIES
As part of H&H’s 140th anniversary, we’ve been celebrating Britain’s eminent rider families with a series of interviews. In our fourth and final instalment, we meet four of the Whitaker dynasty: Michael, John, Jack and Robert
Celebrating 1884 140 2024 years
WE start our conversation with a trip down memory lane to the family members’ early days. For John and Michael this was in Yorkshire, where they and their brothers Ian and Steven grew up.
JOHN:
We were pretty good at riding in gymkhanas in the early days – mounted games they call it now – good enough to pay the diesel money anyway. We used to practise a lot and it did us good I think, jumping on and off ponies and riding at speed. They were good days.
MICHAEL:
The key thing I remember our dad, Donald, teaching us was that even if you were riding a horse that definitely wasn’t good enough and had knocked four fences down, he’d always see the positive and say, “Well he jumped the other five fences very well, so he can’t be that bad.” I’m not sure whether that’s good advice, but it’s stuck with me.
JOHN:
A couple of times, Michael and I have swapped horses and pretended to be the other. In Hamburg one year, I jumped my young horse in the first qualifier, then I had to go home for a funeral, so Michael jumped the horse in the second qualifier as me, then I went back on for the final and took the glory. Not one person twigged!
MICHAEL:
We get mistaken for each other all the time. I’ll get called John when he’s not even at the show. Loads of times people come up to me and say, “John, can I have an autograph or a selfie?” Sometimes I correct them, but most of the time I don’t.
JACK:
Some of my earliest memories are of going to watch Dad at shows – usually just the British shows, but I remember the excitement of going abroad as well. I must have been to Las Vegas five times as a kid and not many people can say that! Every time Dad went in the ring, he’d get an extra-big cheer. At first I didn’t know what that was about, but it dawned on me that my dad’s not bad at this showjumping.
