By Paul Eddison, Sportsbeat
If Lily Laughton wanted an ideal mentor to help her achieve her Olympic dreams, it would be hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Carl Hester.
Now 57, Hester returned from Paris this summer with a fourth successive trip to the podium, winning team dressage bronze in his record-equalling seventh Olympics.
At just 20, Lily is a prodigious talent in dressage, part of the British Dressage U21 International Performance Pathway squad, while she has just come back from a year training and working at a yard in the Netherlands.
While there, she was just down the road from another British Olympic medallist, Lottie Fry, but since coming back to England, she has been able to get insight from the legendary Hester as she looks to follow in his footsteps.
She explained: “I’m very lucky to train with Carl Hester. I don’t even know how many Olympics he has done now. Training with him each week, I’m really lucky and that is where I would like to get to. He’s very good at showing me the way and how to get there and the attitude I need to have.
“The Olympics is always the goal, I was in Holland working for an Olympian. That has always been my dream. I was very lucky that I did the Europeans at 19, so it’s just stepping stones. As long as the horses are happy and I have a good attitude and training, I don’t see why one day, that might not happen.”
The opportunity to train and work in the Netherlands was one that was too good to pass up for Lily, who headed straight over to Europe after finishing school.
Success at the highest level of dressage comes with its fair share of challenges, and Lily admits that she has to manage her social media consumption, particularly around competition.
But a year spent in a completely different environment has been huge for her development.
She said: “It was amazing over there. I was so glad I did it. It was a different culture, different people, a different way of training with the horses, I worked so hard and I think it’s changed my mentality so much.
“Before I was at school and I didn’t have to worry about anything, then I went there and I was living by myself, riding 15-20 horses. I really had to be an adult and grow up. I think it’s helped me now for my business. I was very grateful that I went there and learnt a lot.
“I was living there and working for a rider, so a lot of jealousy came from that. It was a very nice place and I was riding very nice horses. I was working from 4.30 in the morning to nine o’clock at night, which people don’t see on social media, they only see the good stuff.
“I’ve had to work on that a lot and block that out with the riding. I know I’m very lucky to have very good horses with me but I’ve worked very hard to get them so people always expect you to do well. When you start doing well, people don’t like it. People aren’t always happy for you all the time so I’ve had to face that a lot this year.”
Her new business involves buying and selling horses, as well as looking after other people’s horses and teaching them to ride.
It is a big responsibility at such a young age, but the support of her parents has been invaluable as she forges her own path, which has also seen her shortlisted for SportsAid’s prestigious One-to-Watch Award.
The annual Award, launched in 2006, recognises Britain’s brightest young sporting prospects and has previously been won by Olympic champions Tom Daley and Alex Yee and Paralympic gold medallist Hollie Arnold.
The top 10 athletes have been selected from around 1,000 rising stars, supported by SportsAid, across more than 60 different sports in 2024.
Lily said: “I’m only 20, it’s quite a big thing. I’m very lucky to have my parents guiding me on what to do and what not to do. But I’m also very independent, I like to do lots of things myself and figure them out for myself. It’s going super well, I have a lot of really lovely clients with horses here, I’m loving it and learning along the way.”
Lily has been provided with crucial financial support by SportsAid in 2024 – with the charity also offering personal development opportunities through workshops and visits.
The typical value of a SportsAid award is £1,000 with money generated through a combination of commercial partnerships, trust and charitable funds, and fundraising activities.
She was a member of the bronze-medal winning team at the FEI Young Rider European Championships in Hungary last year, while she finished sixth in the FEI CDIY in Aachen, Germany earlier in the year.
That was her first competition on new horse Hulana T, and they are hoping for a similarly good performance back in Aachen in December, for her biggest remaining event of the year.
She said: “I’ve got a really big competition at the end of December which I’m preparing for in Germany. It’s very busy.
“It’s one of the biggest ones in Germany. I’m doing it for my age category which is young riders, which is 16-21 and I’m the only Brit going which is nice.
“It’s quite a privilege being the only one from Britain nominated this year. It’s such a big one and I’ve been planning for it from the beginning.
“There is a lot of pressure with a new horse, who had done very well with the previous rider. I had a lot of people expecting me to do well. There was quite a lot of weight on my shoulders. But we have a really close relationship with that horse so it couldn’t be going any better. It was quite nerve-wracking doing our first competition because everyone is watching you, the British selectors. It’s a lot of pressure.”
That pressure did not appear to get to her, and now with Hester in her corner, the future looks bright for Lily.
SportsAid’s annual One-to-Watch Award is being supported by Aldi – the charity’s Official Supermarket Partner. The winner of this year’s Award will be revealed in December with each of the top 10 receiving cash boosts and special in-person visits at their training environments to celebrate their achievements.
