Tina Cook

  When she was twenty she won a Land Rover scholarship to be based at Gatcombe with Captain Mark Phillips where she trained for a year. Even having two children has not stopped her competing at the top.  In both cases, she rode until she was four months pregnant and was straight back in the saddle and competing just weeks after the births. 

Cook was born into horses.  Her father Josh Gifford was four times Champion Jockey, her mother Althea Roger-Smith was a successful international show jumper who won the Queen Elizabeth Cup, came second in the Hickstead Derby and represented Great Britain in the Nations Cup.  By the time Cook was born her parents were training racehorses, and Cook’s earliest memory is of riding her mother’s old pony.  Cook and her younger brother Nick, now also a racing trainer, rode throughout their childhoods and were active members of the local Crawley and Horsham Pony Club.   It was through the Pony Club that Cook had her first taste of serious competition, she was selected to be on the junior team and went to the Junior European Championships in Rome on a 15.3hh thoroughbred called Song and Dance Man, where the team won the gold medal.  Not long after that Cook left school and took up eventing “seriously”.

Cook’s next great ride was a horse bought originally for her brother to ride – Smithstown Lad. Cook won Individual Bronze and Team Gold on him at the Junior European Championships in Dijon in 1988, Team Silver at the Young Rider Championships at Achselschwang the following year and the National Young Rider Championship at Bramham in 1991.  After her Bramham win, Cook came out of Young Riders the following year and took both horses to her first Badminton, weather conditions were appalling that year and Smithstown Lad had a mistake cross country, but Song and Dance Man went clear and Cook finished tenth after starting nearly last after the dressage.  She was then named as the reserve for the European Championships on the same team as her one of her idols - Ginny Eliot.  Unfortunately fellow team member Karen Dixon and Get Smart had an injury, so Cook made it onto the squad and took the silver. 

Cook’s successes are almost too many to mention; she was on the gold medal winning team at The Hague on General Jock in 1994, has completed and been placed numerous times amongst others, at Badminton and Burghley, as well as Gatcombe and Lexington.  She won another team gold at the European Championships in Italy in 1995 and again at Luhmuhlen in 1999, she won Necarne and Le Lion D’Angers in 1996, and won at Burgie in 1999.  In 2000 she was second at Boekelo and ninth at the European Championships in Pau, and was third in Pau in 2003.

In 2007 Cook got straight back into the saddle after the birth of her second child Harry, and came seventh and ninth at Bramham on First Flight and Miner’s Frolic. Cook and Miners Frolic then went on to win at Brightling Park and Gatcombe, second at Blenheim and third at Boekelo.  

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Last Updated August 2009