Great Britain’s William Fox-Pitt, one of the winningest event riders in history with 14 five-star victories to his name plus multiple senior championships including five Olympic Games, announced his retirement from upper-level competition last weekend at the Badminton Horse Trials (England). “I won’t be coming back to Badminton,” he said Sunday. After sitting in second place after cross-country with a textbook round on 12-year-old Graffenacht, the pair had a disappointing six rails in stadium to finish 13^th. “It’s a shame to finish on a bit of a downer but I’m cool with that. That will be it. It’s a tricky one to say, but I’m 55 and I’ve had a great time. I’m in one piece, and I’m lucky to be in once piece.”

In recognition of Fox-Pitt’s lengthy career, which included winning the Kentucky Three-Day Event three times, in 2010, 2012 and 2014, we’re republishing this profile of the rider which originally ran in 2018, three years after a fall and traumatic brain injury that nearly ended his career.

Oscar Wilde once said, “All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.” William Fox-Pitt is sitting in his tack room in Hinton St. Mary, Dorset, England, with a cup of coffee in hand and a sleeping puppy on his lap, and he smiles wryly as I make the observation that perhaps he’s not too far from becoming his mother after all. 

“I don’t think I’ve quite turned into her yet,” he says with a laugh. 

It’s not an unfavorable comparison to make: The Fox-Pitt matriarch, Marietta, is a veritable force to be reckoned with, and the impact she’s had on eventing goes far beyond her own family. But her own family is a good place to start. 

Fourth at Badminton (England) and second at Burghley (England) in 1965, Marietta Speed had no intention of giving up her sport when she married her late husband Oliver Fox-Pitt in 1966. He told her she’d either have to give up eventing, or he’d have to take it up if they were ever to see one another. He went on to complete Badminton several times. 

William and his three siblings—younger brother Andrew and sisters Laurella and Alicia—grew up in the saddle, and all hunted and competed from an early age. The family estate, Knowlton Court, was the perfect idyll for children and ponies, sequestered in the Kentish countryside. Here, Marietta still maintains a small breeding operation from which William occasionally sources his own up-and-coming stars. 

Now a father of four, William is less keen to see his own offspring follow in his illustrious footsteps, but he understands the positive impact that time in the saddle has on his children. 

“At the moment, the agreement is that they have to ride until they’re good enough that I say they can give up; they can’t be Fox-Pitts and not be able to ride!” he says. “But luckily, they haven’t really been bitten by the pony bug. The boys [Oliver and Thomas] are a bit older and very non-horsey, and I think they rather enjoy being non-horsey. The girls [Chloe and Emily] have a pony each and ride most days. They love the whole pony thing, but in a different way. Personally, I don’t want any of them to event. If they wanted to, I’d take a deep breath. Of course, I’d support them totally, and it would be lovely, but if all four were keen on eventing I’d be feeling very sick and very poor right now!” 

Whereas Marietta spotted the flicker of an enthusiasm that would become an astonishingly successful career, William prefers to let his children get on with it in their own way. “I don’t expect them to be good, and I don’t try to teach them or improve them,” he says. “I just give them the pony and get them ready, and that’s enough.” 

Perhaps in this way he’s less like his mother than I’d bargained for, but one thing’s for certain: He’s inherited her grit and tenacity. In a career spanning more than 30 years, William has clocked up an impressive résumé of wins. He’s lifted the Burghley trophy a record-breaking six times, won at Rolex Kentucky on three occasions, Pau (France) and Badminton twice each, and Luhmühlen (Germany) once. He’s been on the gold-medal team at the European Championships six times, and he’s competed at five Olympic Games. 

The Fall That Changed It All 

One thing he’d never added to the tally was a serious accident, until the Young Horse World Championships at Le Lion d’Angers, France, in 2015. 

“It was an interesting experience, because I’d been so lucky in my career. I’d had very few injuries, and this
was by far the most debilitating thing that had ever happened to me,” says William of the fall. 

It happened late on the course, fence 20 to be precise, in the CCI3*-L championship for 7-year-olds. The horse he was riding, Reinstated, was uninjured, but William spent three weeks in an Angers hospital, two of those weeks in an induced coma to try to halt the effects of a traumatic brain injury, before being transferred back to England. There, the hard work was only just beginning for William, his family and the team at home. 

“Initially I was very lucky that I forgot the fall, so there was no fear,” says William. “There was a long road of rehab and a lot of fuss. I had a lot of support from my sport, through U.K. funding and the funding allocated to eventing for being an Olympic sport.” 

This funding enabled him to see the physiotherapists and psychologists who would help him get back on track. “I’ve seen more quacks and shrinks than I knew existed!” he says. 

The team at home, spearheaded by long-time head groom Jackie Potts, kept the horses fit and in work, although no one knew if William would ever get back on them. 

“In the beginning, [the doctors] thought I was going to be a vegetable, and so everyone was very much taking each day as it came,” explains William. Several horses were shipped off to other riders to begin their 2016 season: Harry Meade took the ride on Reinstated, while William’s stable jockey at the time, Hector Payne, campaigned several of the younger horses in their national-level runs. 

Meanwhile, rather than planning his competition season for the forthcoming Olympic year, William had to come to grips with relearning basic skills. 

“I lost all my senses. I lost sight, I lost taste, I lost ups and downs, happiness, sadness, balance, everything,” he says. “So really, for a few months, I turned into a child. I could walk, but I couldn’t walk upstairs in one go. I was exhausted and had to rest halfway, thinking, ‘Why?! I’m fine; why can’t I do this?’ But when you’ve been on your back for five weeks apparently you lose a lot of muscle.” 

But, he says, “It was all very strange, because I did suffer a lot, but I was never grouchy or grumpy or backward. I was always thinking forward.” 

Watch the highlights of William Fox-Pitt’s 2012 Kentucky Three-Day Event victory with off-the-track Thoroughbred Parklane Hawk, courtesy of USEF Network:

Gaining Perspective 

It was, perhaps, this proclivity for looking ahead that allowed him to accomplish his goal of getting back in the saddle by Christmas of 2015. He released a short video that showed him cantering around his indoor school, and his widespread following rejoiced. William was back and, to quote his wife, Alice Plunkett, “the old magic” was still there. 

In April of 2016, William made his hotly anticipated return to competition at Norfolk’s Burnham Market International (England). He rode his Burghley winner Parklane Hawk and Kentucky winner Cool Mountain in the open intermediate division, but he wasn’t quite back to his old self just yet, nor does he feel he is two years on. 

“I would like to be remembered as someone who loved his horses and was nice to his horses and got the best out of his horses. Not as someone who was gung- ho, do-or-die or a winning machine. I’ve been so lucky.” 

“I’m still not quite right. I’m a bit stupid, although the quacks will tell you that you mustn’t say that, but I am a bit more stupid than normal,” he says with a grin. “I forget stuff. I do funny things. My short-term memory isn’t always good, but I’m still improving. If someone asks me what I’m doing on Friday I wouldn’t have a clue, but in the old days it was all just there. So these things are no longer on the tip of my tongue, but my memory’s still getting better. It’s getting to know new things about myself that weren’t there before. You think, ‘Well, I know myself,’ and now I’m thinking, ‘Well, perhaps I don’t.’ ” 

Gone—or, to be more accurate, irreparably altered—is the competitive fire, the will to win that has propelled him time and again to the top of the leaderboard at the world’s biggest competitions. The fall offered him the clarity of perspective: that perhaps there’s more to life than eventing. 

“It’s been a real journey and a real wake-up call; you sort of start again,” he says. “You think, ‘Why do you want to go to Badminton? You’re lucky to be alive!’ I think that’s how my bang on the head has made me change, but also, my stage of life is changing, because I’m 48, and I was going to retire after London, so why I am doing it, anyway? I’ve got stuff to do. I’ve got children who couldn’t care less what I do, so I’m very much doing it for myself. 

“But why? Well, I’m doing it because it’s what I do; it’s what I love; it’s my business,” he continues. “I’d like to ride at Badminton again, but I’ve already done it, and I’ve already done Burghley, so I don’t need to go there again for me. If I was sensible I’d hang up my boots and get a life! I may have lost a little bit of the fire in my belly, but I do still get excited about horses.” 

He has every reason to. While his return to the sport coincided with the retirement of a large swathe of his former string (“It was an inevitable progress; they all turned 17 at once”) he quickly regrouped and set his sights on the next generation, both human and equine. A string of good results at the two- and three-star levels gave him much to look forward to, and the arrival of an established campaigner, former Jock Paget ride Clifton Signature, helped him to his first major victory post-accident when they won the CCI3*-S at Barbury Castle (England) in July of 2017. 

Alongside campaigning his string of horses, which, at eight, he says is “not quite enough,” William has taken on more teaching duties. Several riders were based with him throughout the 2017 season, including Japan’s Kazuma Tomoto, a former show jumper who, in just his second season eventing, narrowly missed out on a win in the Blenheim CCI3*-S (England) in September. 

Still, a position as a team trainer doesn’t lure him. “I’d never say never, but it’s not on my wish list, because while I very much enjoy the eventing and have accepted it has taken me away, it’s been for my own goal and my own gain and my own life,” he says. “Now, I’m just not sure I can afford that time away. Maybe in the future I can, but for the next few years I need to put some time into home.” 

Home, for William, is a place where he can hatch his plans, his ideas and his burgeoning flock of poultry. 

“My mother’s always had chickens, so I was always very involved with poultry,” he says of the free-rangers who spill out of stables and peck around the outdoor arena, having spent their early days under a heat lamp next to William’s lorry. He’s always had an innate interest in the circle of life: As a child, he bred his pet guinea pigs, raised the young litters, picked out his favorites to breed again, and sold the rest to local pet shops, supplementing his pocket money. 

“I had 86 at one point!” he says. “I just love having some disruption around, and the chickens are great. They’re always breeding, hatching a few things. There might be one or two dead things about, so it really adds a bit of variety, and something’s always happening.” 

Home is also where William would like to escape to when retirement beckons, and it’s the security blanket that he and his wife have constructed for themselves and their children. 

Although he’s spoken in the past about one day converting his eventing facility into a racing one, he now says, “We’ve got four children, and we just think, ‘Is racing really a sensible move?’ ” Instead, he’d like to “spend more time with the children. They’re getting to that stage where the boys want to explore the world, see some amazing places and do some amazing things. I’m just looking forward to the journey with all of them and seeing where that takes us. I’d be happy just doing the school run and breeding a few more chickens.” 

When eventing’s early mornings and relentless hard work finally lose their appeal, it’s clear that William
will do what a Fox-Pitt does best: slip into a life of farm and family. But that time hasn’t come just yet: in Little Fire, in Georgisaurous, in Oratorio and in homebred Yes I Can, he has an array of horses that could go all the way.

And when he does hang up his boots? He’ll have earned his place in eventing lore, where, he says, “I would like to be remembered as someone who loved his horses and was nice to his horses and got the best out of his horses. Not as someone who was gung- ho, do-or-die or a winning machine. I’ve been so lucky.” 

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A version of this article originally appeared in the Jan. 29 & Feb. 5, 2018, issue of The Chronicle of the Horse. You can subscribe and get online access to a digital version and then enjoy a year of The Chronicle of the Horse. If you’re just following COTH online, you’re missing so much great unique content. Each print issue of the Chronicle is full of in-depth competition news, fascinating features, probing looks at issues within the sports of hunter/jumper, eventing and dressage, and stunning photography.