Tom Strawson and Public Address. Photo by Hannah Cole Photography.
Every now and then, among the busy professionals and multi-Olympians, a rider comes through at an event like Defender Burghley who’s got the most relatable story of all.
Meet Tom Strawson, the full-time property professional who’s making his 5* and Defender Burghley debut this week with the former point-to-point racer, Public Address.
Tom’s journey to eventing was circuitous, but also not unexpected: eventing runs in his family, after all. His aunt, Ginny Rose (née Strawson), competed here at Burghley in the 90s, his father rode around at Bramham, and his family was local to the Lincolnshire area, trekking over to watch the event nearly every year.
But Tom’s riding career started off more heavily in point-to-point racing (for our U.S. readers unfamiliar, point-to-point racing is a sort of steeplechase event done in similar fashion to a hunt). He’d done eventing as a teenager, but found he liked the racing, until, that is, he got older and he found it more difficult to keep his weight down to the necessary minimums for the pointing.
“Pointing was easier with university and work,” Tom recalled. “I managed to eventually get going, get a few outside rides, keep myself fit, turn up at a point-to-point, ride at the weekend, and get back working. I did that and absolutely loved it. I’d probably still be doing that now if it wasn’t for the size of them. But as you get older, your natural weight gets heavier, and I was just sweating more and more each year. It just wasn’t particularly fun. So I decided it was probably in my best interest to give up.”
So it’s only fitting that his next, big-time event horse would come to him also via point-to-point racing.
“A friend of mine told me he had a cheap Thoroughbred that could jump,” Tom recalled. “He sent me a video, and that was enough for me to get on a plane and go see him. And we just went from there.”
Tom Strawson and Public Address compete at Ballindenisk earlier this season. Photo by Hannah Cole Photography.
“I’m quite competitive, and I had got a bit bored and thought, ‘What else can I do?'” he continued. “So I started buying and selling a few horses. This horse came along. I tried to sell him, but he had a few issues and I struggled to sell him. I sort of kept him around instead of doing nothing, and he just progressed quite quickly. He’s quite talented.”
Public Address has royal breeding when it comes to pointing, but in reality, he wound up being too slow to be competitive. His temperament and trainability, coupled with his actual jumping ability, however, was enough for Simon to sign away a pittance of a purchase price to bring him home. Whether or not he’d become a 5* horse? Tom wasn’t sure.
“I had no idea, really, because I’d never done it,” he said. “It was always ‘if.’ So it was just a case of keep asking him a few questions, and then he answered them and we progressed. And I suppose that’s happened—-so that’s why we’re here.”
Tom’s got himself well set up with help ahead of this debut and Saturday’s cross country challenge. He’s just down the road from Ros Canter, and of course he’s got plenty of help within his own family, as well as from dressage mastermind Amy Woodhead. “We just use whoever we can get ahold of, usually,” he said. “Everybody’s so busy, so we just appreciate the help we can get.”
He’s feeling as ready as he can be for tomorrow’s challenge, and to be sat on a full Thoroughbred this weekend won’t be a poor decision. “I took this horse [over to Ros’ yard] for his last cross country school last week. She had some lines set up that she was jumping with her good horse. I thought, ‘well, if my horse can jump those, we’ll be okay!'”
[Want more on this pair? Read Horse & Hound’s profile here!]
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