By Sam Morshead »

PUT yourself in the following position. You’re in your early 20s, settled at home in Auckland, New Zealand with 12 months left of your politics degree. What do you do next?

Few would have chosen the route taken by Kiwi eventer Neil Spratt, but his is a true story of developing a dream and seeing it through.

Spratt, as a student, could quite understandably have gagged at the prospect of packing his (and his horses’) bags and jetting off 12,000 miles to the other side of the world to take up a job in Cirencester.

But Spratt was no ordinary student, sacrificing much of the debauchery and frivolity of college fayre in favour of progressing himself as a rider.

Brought up around horses by his mother, Jenny, he took the traditional route through the New Zealand Pony Club as a child before mixing studies and stables with admirable ease during his uni days.

And while he considers himself a late starter in the saddle, it didn’t take long for him to realise that was where he felt most comfortable.

“I started riding when I was eight, which is quite a lot older than a lot of people start I suppose, but my mum was very keen on horses,” Spratt explains in the comfort of his quaint bungalow home in Purton.

“She didn’t come from a very horsy background but she trained to become a riding instructor and did a small amount of riding herself and that’s how I got involved.

“I was fortunate enough to live at home and keep the horses there and commute back to university.

“I didn’t have the typical student lifestyle because I wanted to do the horses.

“In what was meant to be my third and final year at university I was walking a cross-country course with a friend and they said they’d heard through a friend over here that there was a job opportunity coming up here in England, and would I be interested?

“Of course I was interested. I knew I still had another year of university to go but I also knew it was not going to come up again.

“I think my parents understood that’s what I really wanted to do. They were incredibly supportive of me.

“They tried to encourage me to really think of the options but they also realised that that was where my heart was so six weeks later I was on a plane with two horses.”

That flight took him to the Gloucestershire home of Tracy Bennett, a successful music producer based in London, and his then-wife Joanna.

The pair, on Joanna’s bequest, had invested in a yard. But only six weeks into Spratt’s stay the couple split up.

“She was the one who wanted the horses, he wasn’t at all horsy,” said Spratt.

“But he was kind enough to say ‘Look, you’ve come to the other side of the world, carry on with it and we’ll see where it goes.’”

In the end that invitation extended for another five years, before Spratt popped down the A419 to Purton - after meeting his now-wife Pip.

Pip, a master saddler, and Spratt quickly clicked and soon they adopted her parents’ house as a base while Spratt expanded his professional network.

And after 10 years in England, the Kiwi can finally say the efforts put into establishing that network are coming to fruition.

“I was speaking to Sam Griffiths (an Australian rider based nearby) and he said it reckoned it took him 10 years as well,” said Spratt.

“You land on the other side of the world, you don’t know anyone, you’ve got no experience of how the system works over here and you’ve got start at the bottom.

“You’ve got to take that long to build up contacts, know where to go to buy horses, where not to go to buy horses and I think we’re finding the right path to go down now.”

The Auckland man steadily found his feet, earning a place on the New Zealand long-list for the Athens Olympic in 2004.

He completed Badminton for the first time in 2005, coming 25th on Harker, and claimed fifth place at Punchestown in the same year.

Not that it has been a decade of calm waters for Spratt and his family, which now includes daughter Maisy, five, and Chester, two.

For two awful years in the mid-2000s, Spratt tumbled into an all-time low.

A combination of difficult horses, troublesome owners and a lack of optimism ganged up to drive him to despair.

And at one stage he was willing to give up the sport.

“I’d had a guts-full, I was out. I didn’t even want to go to the yard,” said Spratt, his voice tinged with the remnants of the emotions of that arduous two-year spell.

“I hated it. I hated the horses. I nearly went and got a proper job.

“I didn’t want to go to the competitions. I hated the horses I was having to ride, we had a couple of tricky owners who were frustrating to deal with.

“That was a particularly dark period.”

But, just as he had managed to complete his degree through the Open University scheme, Spratt refused to give up.

Speaking candidly, he reveals how he cannot stand failing to see things through - ‘I hate leaving things unfinished. If I start something I have to give it my best shot’ - and when two horses popped up for sale within a matter of days in 2008 he quickly got his career back on track.

That period was one of Spratt’s many learning curves. And though he insists he still makes mistakes, his journeys have obviously taught him well.

“I’ve made a hell of a lot of mistakes, I’ve learnt a lot through those mistakes and I finally feel that I’m getting where I want to be,” he said.

“They say it’s a fool that makes the same mistake twice. I’ve been a fool a couple of times.

“I have absolutely no regrets. I’ve always known it’s what I wanted to do.”

Spratt came to understand the character of horses with which he felt an instant bond - strangely those with aggressive temperaments, frequently discarded by other riders.

He garnered the experience that sets the top riders in front of their younger rivals - perfectly illustrated by 55-year-old Mark Todd’s Badminton victory this year.

He has begun to impart his passion onto his children - daughter Maisy has already taken an interest in ponies.

And now he has got to the stage where he has realistic ambitions to feature in next summer’s Olympic Games in London.

“You’ve got to earn a living - but that’s not my number one driving factor,” Spratt tells me with honest and enthused eyes.

“I love what I do and I want to get to the Olympics and be competing at Badminton on a regular basis.

“That’s what keeps you going more than the money.”

Ten years and 12,000 miles down the line, you wouldn’t bet against the politics graduate with a never-say-die mentality realising yet another dream.

Sourced from:  http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/sport/9093370.EQUESTRIAN__Spratt_is_living_the_dream/