62 | THE VOICE JULY 2022
Sport
Freedom on horseback
Racehorse trainer has won an award for his equestrian academy. By Rodney Hinds
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REEDOM ZAMAPALADUS is the founder of The Urban Equestrian Academy. Based in Leicester, he is a fully qualified racehorse trainer and horse breeder. The academy’s We Ride Too initiative provides a viable pathway for anybody looking to make a career in the equine industry. Earlier this year, Freedom was the recipient of the prestigious Godolphin Award for community contribution. Here, he talks to The Voice about some of his ambitions… RH: Massive congratulations on winning the award. It’s a big award from a big organisation, how does it feel to be honoured in that way? FZ: You know what, it’s like a sense of relief for me, because I have been on this journey for five years doing what I do, and we have never really had any significant type of recognition. We’ve been nominated for some big awards in the past, but we’ve never won. To finally get it at that level is a big deal. It is a sense of relief and appreciation. I thank God, I know God is good. I hope people can take us seriously now, because there are other organisations who do similar things to what we do who have all the backing in the world. We have done this from the mud. We don’t have big sponsors, this is a community effort, the community of Leicester has put Urban Equestrian on the map and allowed me to win this type of award. RH: Winning the award, does that now hopefully take you
RIDING AMBITION: Freedom Zamapaladus has founded the Urban Equestrian Academy in Leicester, which has won a Godolphin Award
“We don’t have big sponsors, the community has put us on the map” and the organisation to another level? FZ: I hope so. I think the best way that we can use this spotlight through receiving this award, is to see how organisations such as Godolphin can help us, because they are aware of what we do, other organisations are aware of what we do. We are very thankful to the Racing Foundation. If it wasn’t for them, we would be non-existent in terms of surviving COVID. The money doesn’t even matter to me, what matters to is how can Godolphin and other organisations of that prestige help establish Urban Equestrian’s aims and objectives. We have so many people getting in contact with us saying we wish this was in Nottingham, in Birmingham, in London. If people can get on board with us, they can see it is a legitimate thing that we are doing. RH: Tell me a little bit about when your love of horses began? FZ: My love for horses started when my parents decided to leave England and move back to Antigua. My uncle in Antigua had horses. I was always in love with animals, because he had horses it was my opportunity to
work with animals I never had an opportunity to work with back in England. So, through working in his race yard at the age of 14, I advanced quickly, and by the time I was 17 years old, after a hurricane when we had to let go of staff, my uncle made me his chief trainer. I applied for my trainer’s licence and got it at 17 — I was the youngest racehorse trainer at the time. We dominated Antigua. We won many races in Barbados and Trinidad, too. It was at that point I said to myself, I am good at this and want to take it further. My whole ambition at the time was when I finished school in Antigua, to come back to England, because I know England is a horse country. However, my whole outlook changed when I came back to England and saw that I was ostracised for being black and being brash. I was a proud black youth, I was a street youth, raised on the streets of Antigua by my uncle. So, I came back to England, went to equestrian college, got my qualifications I went and lived all around England. And everywhere in England there was no one like myself. I couldn’t get access to my cultural foods, my social circles, I couldn’t see any black people or any other nonwhite people, and it frustrated
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me. Not just that, but any time I was in the city of Leicester, my own family and peers used to wonder what I was messing with horses for, and when I went out into the rural community, it was the same thing, they couldn’t understand it. It frustrated me, and that’s what led me to write my book and people understood it. I came back to England and went to work in the horse industry, I fell out of love with it, because of the racism I faced,
tures and communities together through horses, and we don’t neglect the fact that the UK is a horse country, it is embedded in equestrianism, but we don’t forget our own cultural connections to horses, it is important. We look at horses from a global perspective, and that is what makes Urban Equestrian attractive. RH: What about the possibility one day of you being the
“I learnt in the Caribbean. I bring cultures and communities together through horses” the social isolation that I faced, a lack of acknowledgement, the undermining. I turned my back on it for five years. I got into youth work, and through youth work I did little horse projects and got into network marketing which led me to come across a guy who wrote his own book, and he was saying it is so important that we all need to write our own stories. One of the reasons why Urban Equestrian is partly successful is because I didn’t learn anything about horses in the UK, I learnt in the Caribbean. I bring cul-
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first black trainer of note in this country? FZ: That’s my ambition! By the time I am 50, I want to be challenging Godolphin. I am 43 now. I have always said to myself, if I was ever given the opportunity, I could take on the best — I will take on all of them. I have 12 horses, I have an ex-racehorse which is the bloodline of Sadler’s Wells, with the same bloodline as Frankel who was one of the greatest. I have one of his, you could say, cousins. She is only eight years old, at the minute she is training our
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young people who want to be jockeys so they can get experience of what it is like to ride an ex-racehorse. Who knows, we might have our own locally bred racehorses and locally trained people riding these horses, and we would have expanded into Urban Equestrian racing, that is an ambition. RH: How ready is British horse racing to accept someone like you ? FZ: It hasn’t been so far. As for Urban Equestrian, we just set it up and did what we had to do. I don’t think it is a case of if anyone is ready or not, they will have to be, because we are just going to kick off the door, in a positive way, not a negative one. When you say to yourself less than 1% of black and Asian minority ethnic people make up the equestrian world, we can’t wait on anyone to do these things, I can’t wait on someone to give me a chance, I just must go out and do it. I will look for people who love the vision and idea, and want to help me do that, and I will go and do it, and we will see where it takes me, and even if I don’t get to see the fruits of what I want to do, it will inspire young black youths, who then might take it to the next level, if I don’t take it to the next level but just open the door.
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