William Fox-Pitt interview: The day I thought I killed Madonna

There are not many film icons or rock idols, let alone sports stars, who have been poster boys for their profession for as long as William Fox-Pitt has for three-day-eventing. However, after the most successful career of any British person in the sport and completing Badminton for the 26th time, he has declared that he is finally retiring.

This is his 40th year of eventing in a sport which can leave you physically broken, maimed or worse. Five riders died at British events in 1999 and a fall in France in 2015 left Fox-Pitt in a coma for two weeks and affected his memory for the following four months. And so longevity has to be up there with his most significant achievements.

The 55-year-old’s list of battle honours is extensive. He was the first Brit to be world No 1, went to five Olympics and won three medals with the team, took home seven European team gold medals, won six Burghleys on six different horses, two Badmintons, and is the only rider to have won five out of Eventing’s six ‘majors’.

The honour roll is so long it is easier to list what he did not quite manage to do, with Fox-Pitt unable to take individual gold at Olympic, World or European level.

If he can point to the most bizarre moment, though, it was in trying to teach Madonna to ride when she was married to Guy Ritchie and living in Wiltshire.

“She Googled me and said she wanted some lessons, but didn’t have a horse,” recalled Fox-Pitt of what he calls the most surreal stage of his life. “I asked her where she lived and she said she didn’t know.

“I told her I’d never heard of anyone not knowing where they lived but she said she had only been driven there and we established it might be somewhere near Salisbury. But she ended up coming to Hinton St Mary for lessons.

“I regularly had to pinch myself. We had a good relationship, she was a good learner but she didn’t always want to learn. There were days when she just wanted to go for a ride. But it was a big risk [because of who she was] not to fall off.

“After she’d built an indoor school at Ashcombe [Ritchie’s home] she got me over to see her new horse. She was brave but not really a jump rider and she fell off. I didn’t know where to look. She was lying on the floor, didn’t move and I was thinking, ‘oh my god, she’s dead’. Then she proceeded to come alive very quickly. And vocally.

‘Deal with me. Get this s--- off of me’

“She then stormed over to me. She was covered in the arena surface. She didn’t want anyone to know she’d fallen off and I said it was a sure giveaway if she was covered head-to-toe.

“As you do in those situations, if someone isn’t dead, your first instinct is to catch the horse. ‘Don’t be getting the horse!’, she bellowed. ‘Deal with me. Get this s--- off of me’. I said, ‘I can’t do that’, but she said, ‘You get it off of me – you got it on me, you get it off of me. Don’t tell a soul!’ I said, ‘I’m just glad you’re alive’.”

The way Fox-Pitt tells the story, his next most pressing concern after the horse was negotiating Madonna’s use of the English language.

“I was gently dusting her down, trying to do it almost without touching her,” he continued. “‘You’re not doing it properly’, she said. ‘Do it properly’. So I ended up having to brush it off her breasts and thighs hoping no one was looking, and thinking, ‘what in god’s name am I doing?’ It was a moment. That was the last lesson I ever gave her. I think when she divorced Guy and went back to America she gave up riding.”

It is certainly an unexpected departure from the day-to-day. But on his future in the sport, Fox-Pitt reveals his decision to stop has taken some deliberation.

“I’ve been thinking a long time about it,” he says of retirement from top-level competition. “The big dream for quite a long time was racehorses but I’ve changed my mind. I want a bit more of a life now. I’ve already done years of declining and not accepting stuff to be able to ride. I don’t want the commitment of 100 horses and 100 owners and the whole crazy life.

“I got such a kick out of eventing because it was me, my horse and my fault. If you’re a trainer, as I see it, it’s you, it’s your horse but it’s someone else’s fault, there are more dimensions to it. If I make a mistake, I’m furious but it’s easier to live with.

“I’m now getting more and more involved with coaching, I’m enjoying it more.

“I’ve trained Team Brazil towards Paris. I’ve got my Japanese lad Kazu Tomoto who was fourth individually in Tokyo, the worst position to finish. I was rather hoping he hit a load of show jumps down so he didn’t finish fourth! He lived with that but got great recognition in Japan.

“I’ve got some stables free now so I’ll be looking for someone to be based here and being involved with that at some level. I’m training a few, some related to the horses I’ve ridden.”

This moves the subject beyond training and into the world of cloning. Fox-Pitt’s best horse was Tamarillo, an Anglo-Arab gelding who may have won in Athens had it not been for going lame on the cross-country phase. In 2013 his clone, Tomatillo – an equine Dolly the Sheep – was born and Fox-Pitt broke him in.

“It’s interesting the similarities and differences between the two. Tamarillo hated men until I was on his back. Sometimes I couldn’t catch him in his stable. He really saw a man as a threat. I thought, ‘poor him, he’s had a bad experience with a man in his life’. Jackie, my head groom, always dealt with him and I just got on him.

“The clone, who had never had a bad experience in his life, was identical. Completely disliked men, wouldn’t come near my pupils unless they were female. I felt guilty for blaming some man for falling out with Tam when it was just in him.

“Tam was a gelding, the clone is a stallion. Tam was a prince, in no way arrogant. He was quite insecure in himself, very needy. Being a stallion, the clone thinks he owns the world, thinks he’s the best thing that ever walked the earth.”

‘I’m not good on a hot-headed horse’

Apart from his long legs dangling below the stomach of most of the horses he rode, the 6ft 5in rider was so at one with his horses they often appeared as one entity rather than two separate beings and, unlike some riders, he was never defined by a type of horse. He rode geldings, mares, stallions, ex-racehorses, Anglo-Arabs, Irish hunters, warmbloods, you name it.

“I’m not good on a hot-headed horse,” Fox-Pitt countered. “I’m big, a man, I’ve got more leg than most. They need to accept the leg. I’d be realistic and know what suits me.

“When I was young, I had four six-year-olds and I told Karen Dixon I thought they’d all be good. She looked at me and said, ‘they can’t be, you’ll be lucky if one’s any good’. And she was right, one went to Burghley, the rest did other jobs. So I have learned quicker and quicker which horses would and wouldn’t work for me. I’d have been relatively optimistic and I’d always give a horse another day but as its gone on I know what suits me. If it’s an athlete, wants the job and is on your side, as long as it has the body to say yes, it’s amazing what you can produce.”

He says eventing is changing with society. “Everyone is far more concerned with look and flash and impression rather than what very tidily ticks a box and does a good job, even if they don’t look like a gold medal-winning machine,” he points out. “I’ve had my amazing fancy pants – Tamarillo, Chilli Morning, Parklane Hawk – but behind them some completely Mr Joe Bloggs, normal that others might not have taken on.”

Will he miss Badminton, an event attended by as many as the Cheltenham Festival? “I’ll miss being fit and trained all for a good reason, that vibe,” he said. “And I’ll miss it when everything should be getting tense in April.

“It’ll be weird waking up on the Saturday morning, being able to have a lie-in. But on the occasions I haven’t ridden at Badminton I’ve woken up and thought. ‘thank god’. I’m a here-and-now-person, not a regret person. I’ll enjoy watching my kids, going to Paris with my Brazilians, but I won’t ever wish I was doing it. That’s not my mindset.”