FOR many athletes, a career in top-level sport is short and unpredictable, but show jumping star Nick Skelton is proof that it doesn’t have to be this way.
The veteran equestrian has made the Sports Personality of the Year shortlist after winning his first individual Olympic gold medal at Rio 2016 – at the tender age of 58.
His dramatic victory made Nick the oldest British Olympic gold medallist since 1908, and goes alongside the gold he won in the team event at London 2012.
Team GB's FIRST EVER #GOLD in the #EquestrianJumping individual! A faultless performance from the pair
pic.twitter.com/g2nVIpasFc
— Team GB (@TeamGB) August 19, 2016
But who is Nick Skelton, the show jumper whose long road to glory demonstrates good things come to those who wait?
Where is he from?
Nick was born in Bedworth, Warwickshire, the day before New Year ’s Eve in 1957, and was educated in nearby Coventry.
He had an early start in the saddle, beginning to ride aged just 18 months when he was bought his first pony, a Welsh Mountain called Oxo.
Oxo lived to be 40, and Nick’s professional jockey son Harry learned to ride on the same horse.
The double Olympic gold medallist began riding properly at the age of six, bunking off school to ride his ponies while his dad was at work.
He left school with no qualifications to work full-time with famous show jumping trainers Ted and Liz Edgar, who have helped craft the careers of several other top-level riders.
Nick has performed with great success over a career spanning over 40 years, since taking an individual gold at the 1975 Junior European Championship.
In 1978 he set a British Show Jumping High Jump record over seven foot seven inches which remains to this day.
He has won three golds at the European Show Jumping Championships, and made the first of his seven Olympic appearances at the 1988 Seoul games.
Why could it all have ended so differently?
Despite his wider success, an Olympic medal eluded the veteran until his sixth attempt – but he was lucky to even be riding a horse.
In 2000, just before the Sydney games, his horse refused a fence at a show in Cheshire and catapulted him into the year, breaking his neck in two places.
He initially retired after being told another serious fall could be fatal, but his injury healed enough for him to begin competing again in time to make the 2004 Beijing Olympics.
The rest, as they say, is history.
What else do we know about him?
Nick is a fan of the British comedy classic Only Fools and Horses, and has written an autobiography punnily titled ‘Only Falls and Horses’.
He is known for being a colourful character out of the saddle, writing in his autobiography of an occasion when he traded blows with show jumping legend Harvey Smith when he was just 21.
An eventful career has also seen him given a dressing down from the British team manager after an all-night drinking session in Dublin, and receive two-month ban in 1991 after one of his horses gave a positive drug test. He maintained he was innocent of wrongdoing.
Following his 2012 Olympic win post boxes in Alcester, where he now lives, and his birthplace of Bedworth were painted gold in his honour. London Midland rail company then marked his triumph at Rio with a gold sign at Bedworth train station.
Nick was awarded an OBE in the 2012 Birthday Honours list for services to equestrian sport.
What are Nick’s chances of winning SPOTY 2016?
Despite his inspiring story, in a strong year for British sporting success Nick is unlikely to triumph in Sports Personality of the Year.
According to Sun Bets, his odds of victory are 66/1, leaving him tied with swimmer Adam Peaty in seventh place on the 16-athlete shortlist.
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