PROFILE.
HUNT FOR SUCCESS A YEAR AFTER SEARCHING FOR A NEW DIRECTION, INTERNATIONAL RIDER AND TRAINER LEVI HUNT HAS FINALLY FOUND MECCA IN A PEACEFUL SPOT IN HEREFORDSHIRE. STEPHANIE BATEMAN MEETS HIM AT HIS NEW BASE TO FIND OUT WHERE HE’S COME FROM AND WHAT HIS PLANS ARE FOR THE FUTURE.
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t was a pile of horse droppings near his house on a council estate in Wolverhampton that sparked Levi Hunt’s passion for horses. A year later, having spent ‘every possible moment’ at his local riding school, working for ‘a bareback ride turning the horses out’, he was on a train to Devon to work for the Bleekmans as a working pupil, aged 16. I bluffed my way through my interview and when I got there, I realised how little I knew,” says Levi. “The most important thing was that I had escaped the world I was living in; food stamps at school, a single mum bringing up seven kids and living below the bread line.” He spent 18 months as ‘cannon fodder’, breaking in young horses for the Bleekmans before heading to Warwickshire to work on a hunting yard. From there, he did a nine-week stint at the British Racing School followed by a year at the Waley-Cohens’. “I went from earning £20 a week and living in a mobile home to earning £100 a week and living in a converted stable. At every step up, I felt like I’d made it,” he muses.
LEFT: LEVI HUNT WITH THE EIGHT YEAR-OLD FANDANGO, PART OF AN EXCITING STRING OF HORSES HE IS NOW PUTTING TOGETHER. RIGHT: PASSIONATE ABOUT COACHING, LEVI TEACHES 50 LESSONS A WEEK ALONGSIDE PRODUCING AND COMPETING HORSES.
BRITISH DRESSAGE // Issue 6 2020 // 7
