A prizewinning horse previously ridden by a two-time Team GB Olympic gold medal winner has died in a road crash in Wiltshire, throwing a teenage equestrian's Olympic ambitions into doubt.
Tinks Walker, 17, was riding her 10-year-old gelding Killossery Kaptain, known as Benny, on a country lane in the Cotswolds on April 2 when a car collided with them. The horse, thought to be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, was fatally injured in the incident.
The crash has shattered Walker's hopes of being selected for Great Britain at next year's Eventing European Championships for Young Riders.
Crash details
Walker had taken Benny and a two-year-old horse named Lily out for a morning ride, around a mile from her home in Malmesbury. She told police she saw a car “flying around the curve” and moved the horses onto a grass verge.
“I felt totally powerless and the next thing was I felt an impact. I woke up on the floor. It felt like I had been beaten up,” she said in her account to Wiltshire Police. “I saw Benny lying on the floor. Benny did try and get up once - but struggled to do so and ultimately fell back down to the floor. He did not try and stand up again.”
Benny's pedigree
Benny was a four-star competition horse, ridden by Laura Collett, a Team GB two-time Olympic gold medal winner. Walker, an A-Level student, trained with the horse daily and called him her “best friend”.
In a fundraiser set up by Walker, she wrote: “He was the most wonderful, kind horse that I was looking forward to learning from as we went up the levels eventing together.”
Walker's mother, Netia Walker, told the Daily Mail that Benny was “the Brad Pitt of horses to us”. She added: “My daughter could have been killed, we have lost her best horse and have another one that is so traumatised we can't ride her on the roads.”
Legal action and fundraiser
Wiltshire Police reportedly wrote to Walker five months after the incident, saying there was “sufficient evidence to bring a prosecution against the alleged offending driver”, but that the driver had been offered a “safe and considerate driving course” to “re-educate” her. Walker's family said they want justice.
Solicitor Cathryn Godfrey of Irwin Mitchell has started proceedings against the driver on Walker's behalf. Hannah Bradley of Aria Grace Law is suing for the loss of the horse on behalf of Benny's owners, one of whom is Walker's grandmother.
A spokesman for the driver and her company, which owned the car, said they were “deeply saddened by the death of Benny” and that “the incident was a terrible accident, and our team are extremely distressed by what occurred”.
Walker will race at Newbury on November 5 to raise money for the British Horse Society's Dead Slow road safety campaign. On a JustGiving page, she wrote: “I am hoping to raise awareness of road safety and stop what happened to us happening to someone else. It was devastating and should not have happened.”
