When Gavin James Makinson recently described himself as the new Carrie Bradshaw on horseback I immediately pictured him in high heels, dressed flamboyantly and flicking his long hair behind him, marching down Bond Street to the Sex and the City theme tune and I became rather worried; however if you consider that he lives in the heart of London, has had a role on stage in the West End production of Les Miserables for the last three years, and yet keeps his two event horses less than two miles away from his house perhaps there are some parallels to be drawn…..
Gavin’s Horses
Gavin returned to riding, and found his horse Oliver Cromwell, and then his full brother by a series of happy coincidences; a chance lesson reignited the spark, and the horse he originally was supposed to see with a view to purchase was too green, so he ended up looking at, and loving Oliver at the same yard instead,
“Oliver (Cromwell) is coming nine, and Oscar (Wilde), his full brother, is about to turn six in May; they’re remarkably similar and yet quite different to each other in many ways. I found Oliver via an advert in Horse and Hound. I hadn’t ridden for about twelve years, and ended up, on Valentine’s Day of 2009, staying in a really beautiful hotel in the Cotswolds which I worked out was only a mile from Talland which is where I do a lot of my training now, (with Pammy and Charlie Hutton on the flat, and Gerry Sinnott for jumping) and where I bought my first horse from, so I ended up going for a schoolmaster lesson there that weekend. Within about three months of flicking through the back pages of the Horse and Hound in a slightly more serious way I ended up going to see this grey horse. He was the first and only horse I looked at. I sat on him once and put an offer on him within three days; it all happened very quickly indeed.”
Gavin on Oliver Cromwell (all photos supplied by and used with Gavin’s permission)
Having sealed the deal, Gavin had to find somewhere for his horse to live,
“You’d be surprised. I live in Hackney which is literally three and a half miles from Oxford Circus, but there’s quite a bit of green space by me and actually if you drive less than two miles away in the car there’s a big open park space called Lee Valley, and I knew they had a riding centre there, but it was only when I took my dog for a walk that I realised what great facilities they had. It was only then that it dawned on me that I really could keep and train a horse there. The galloping is fairly limited, but there is a decent sized field at the back which is maybe three or four acres where I can do big circuits when I’m doing the fitness work. I think for years I had just presumed I couldn’t make it work, and that you could only ride in Hyde Park, or you had to commute to your horse, but you really can make it work if you find the right place. I was very lucky; I rang them up and they said they had one space left so I immediately snapped it up.”
Starting at the beginning again
Although it had been twelve years since Gavin competed, Oliver proved to be a quick learner, and was eventing within about three months. He did four events in his first season, finishing on a win at BE-90 level at Tweseldown. The next year he did two events before moving up to Novice level and finished that season with a CCI*. Last June Gavin took him intermediate before a bruised hoof ended their season prematurely, but the good news is that Oliver is back in full work, and after a couple of months holiday out in the fields at Talland, has been busy doing some hunting, and indoor dressage and show-jumping, to prepare for this season when Gavin hopes to aim him for a CCI**.
“He’s a talented boy, but he’s quite difficult, he reminds me a lot of Murphy Himself which is what I thought when first I saw him: he’s a big, grey scopey thing who just covers the ground effortlessly. He’s a British Sport Horse, but with the best of Irish breeding, if you go back two generations you go back to Spring Diamond so he has fantastic show-jumping breeding, and the mare he’s out of is by Carol’s Flight who was an old Eddie Macken horse.”
Gavin combined his competing with a full-time job working for a film company, as well as performing 8 shows a week on stage in Les Miserables, and in the middle of all this decided to add a second horse to the equation!
“Towards the end of 2009 Oliver was causing a stir wherever he went, and at his first international event there was a gang of french people watching him intently throughout, and I just presumed they were admiring him. Then on the last day somebody came up and asked me if my horse was for sale which nearly made me fall off because it hadn’t even crossed my mind; I’d never had one of those conversations before. That happened to me a couple of times at his last few events and I suddenly started panicking because he wasn’t for sale, and he isn’t for sale, but these were six figure sums that people were throwing at me, and you begin to think how much that sort of money could change your life – I could buy an enormous lorry, I could buy four youngsters and start again…so I just started looking around in case a genuine offer came in that was too good to refuse, and because I knew he was so talented, and because I knew that there were full siblings available, I thought I might as well go and have a look at the rest of the family.”
In his words, a big, woolly four year old barely broken and dragged in from the field, Gavin watched Oscar loose school over a fence a few times, wasn’t particularly impressed but thought he had something, and was worth the risk. He bought him without ever having sat on him, and has yet to regret it,
“Within a month realised I’d got something quite special again, I’ve been very lucky. He’s only five still but he’s way beyond his years in ability, his mind isn’t quite catching up but he is ridiculously talented so fingers crossed. He started very late last season because he still goes through phases of being very awkward so I think I only started him in July, but he was top ten at his first event, won his next one, was seventh in the next ….He’s had a brief holiday and is now doing the rounds of indoor work and heading very quickly towards his first event of this season.”
Gavin on Oscar Wilde
The Twelve Year Gap
After completing an Equine Science Degree at Hartpury College, Gavin made his fame and fortune in acting, singing and modeling but no matter how he tried to resist it, the hankering to ride lay dormant but couldn’t be denied,
“I was trying to imagine what I did before for twelve years, and I was quite busy doing other things but I just used to kind of pretend that I wasn’t that interested in horses yet every time they were on the telly I’d watch them, and I’d still look at my Horse and Hound every week; it’s just that I’d shut down one area of my life and now I’ve picked it back up again where I left off, it’s quite bizarre.”
The other things that had kept Gavin busy were working at BBC News, the Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical Whistle Down the Wind, a big production of South Pacific, various other productions, several temping jobs, the full-time job, and of course the three years in Les Miserable in which he played both the part of the Bishop of Digne and Combeferre.
Gavin (in the red and white waistcoat) in Les Miserables
“It’s the kind of show that everyone wants to be in if you sing, because of it’s history, and the fact that it’s such a mammoth, epic thing. I think that anybody who sings or wants to work in theatre ends up gravitating towards that show. It was one of my first auditions, but I think by the time I got the part I’d auditioned for it eight or nine times. It was a long time coming, it was a real hard graft for eight years to get there so when it did come I was quite relieved. I’d done some lovely jobs in the meantime, but as you can imagine if you’re self-employed, that West End twelve-month contract is a huge relief as it affords you the luxury of knowing that you’re going to be able to pay your bills. Of course I had to make it more complicated because I kept up my full-time film job alongside Les Mis, and that allowed me to earn two wages which was the point that I began to think I could buy a horse with some of the money!”
Gavin also made great friends within the production, all completely unhorsey, his favourite quote, he says, was one of the cast asking him how he had fared in his “gymkhana” the previous weekend! This last summer he told me organised a surprise Pony Club themed birthday party for the Les Miserables cast and brought them all down to Lee Valley. They all had riding lessons, played mounted games, and Gavin gave them a jumping demonstration.
“I had rather a lot more respect at work that week, but I could have wiped out an entire West End show if it had all gone wrong!”
Juggling Eventing and Life on the Stage
After describing his seemingly impossibly hectic schedule for the last few years to me, I’m relieved to hear that he’s taken a break from Les Miserables for a while to concentrate on his eventing,
“For any West End show you generally do eight shows a week. You have sunday off, then you do two shows on a wednesday and two on a saturday. I had my other full-time job, and then I had one or two horses to ride, and Les Mis isn’t short, it’s three hours from start to finish, so doing it twice back to back on the wednesday and saturday is quite exhausting. I worked out that I could do my fast work those days because it took less than an hour to do, so I could get up at 8am, go and do the fast work on both horses, and then be in town at lunchtime to do the matinee and then do the evening show, and then I’d often compete on the Sunday. I was there for three years, and as I got more experienced at going up the levels I could schedule my holiday to fit in with the really key events that I needed to get to.”
How the One helped the Other
Surprisingly, the acting and singing has really helped Gavin with his competitive riding,
“The longer I did it the more I realised that they were both remarkably similar, and actually I think singing in particular is a physical skill and requires a lot of training in the same way that riding does. The same things apply: relaxation, breath control, managing your nerves so although it sounds hilarious there are quite a lot of transferable skills between the two. I did a little bit of work with a sport psychologist and he pointed out that both things are meant to be fun. I think with a big show like Les Mis, after doing it for a week you don’t really get nervous any more, you only tend to get nervous when you’re in an unknown situation or it’s a new job, or in front of somebody very important or that kind of thing. Like anything, once you’ve done it for a while it becomes your job. I did used to get very nervous, with show-jumping in particular, but you realise you don’t really do anybody any favours if you can’t replicate what you do at home when it matters, so the two have really helped each other out nerves-wise, and managing them. I think because of my acting training, I take my training quite seriously and I hate the idea of just sitting still and not constantly improving.”
Gavin (on the left) as the Bishop of Digne in Les Miserables
Charlie Hutton comes to London once a month to help Gavin on the flat, and Gavin takes the horses to Talland every two months for three days to ride with Charlie’s mother, Pammy, and will often try and fit in a local event during that time or tack one on to the way home. While his horses may have caught the eye at competitions, Gavin tells me that he prefers to keep a low profile – you won’t catch him singing karaoke or throwing shapes on the dance floor at the competitiors’ parties,
“I try to keep it quiet. The difficulty has been that I would like the riding to talk first. I hate the idea of someone arriving with lots of press that has all the gear but actually has no idea what they’re doing and can’t ride. The nice thing in the eventing world is that people don’t seem to care that much; they’re a really sociable bunch and they respect you if you’re a good rider and that’s really all that matters to them. I think other facets of equestrian sport are slightly more sniffy but the eventers just get along and are happy to help out or give advice, and just get on with you.”
Gavin would eventually like to add two or three more horses to his string, and contest a CCI**** on either of the two brothers he owns now. In an exciting development, we’ll be able to keep up with Gavin throughout the season as he’s just been announced as a regular blogger on Eventing Worldwide, and be sure to follow him on twitter too.
Many thanks to Gavin for talking to Eventing Nation, and thank you reading, Go Carrie Bradshaw, Go Sex and the City and Go Eventing!
