Following her win on board Quality Diamonds N Rubies, British Speed Derby champion Ella Dalton chats to Hickstead's Press Officer Victoria Goff
Even the most talented scriptwriter in the world would have struggled to come up with a more dramatic ending to last year’s British Speed Derby. Ella Dalton, a 21-year-old rider competing in the class for the first time, was poised to top the leaderboard after a fast round on her mare, Quality Rubies N Diamonds. Only the reigning champions, Harriet Biddick and Silver Lift, could deny Ella and ‘Ruby’ their victory.
Last to go, Harriet was nearing the end of the course and looking on track to retain the title, when her three-time Speed Derby winner’s bridle slipped off his head. Despite the sudden lack of steering, such was their partnership that they made it through the treble of planks and turned towards the finish, only to sail past the final fence.
Ella had had two rides in the class – after her impressively quick round on Quality Rubies N Diamonds, while her latter ride had ended prematurely after Catch the Pigeon II took aversion to the double of white uprights at fence two. Ella was busy racing back to the stables to get Ruby for the prizegiving, when she heard sudden shouts of ‘she’s lost her bridle!’. Even then, it took her a few minutes to realise that she’d won.
“It was special, because I produced her myself, and she's a bit unorthodox in her way of going, but we always believed that she had some big wins in her,” says Ella, who rode three laps of honour after the prizegiving, and didn’t stop smiling throughout.
The Speed Derby had been their main aim for a couple of months. “It's always been a class I watched growing up. I knew Ruby was quite fast and she's very brave, so I thought I’d give it a go. I had thought about doing the class a year earlier, but I wasn't quite brave enough about jumping that big at the time. But by last year I was kind of ready for it.”
In the run up to last year’s Al Shira’aa Hickstead Derby Meeting, Ella set about putting in some study, watching and rewatching videos of the Speed Derby, and practising some of the trickier elements of the course, such as those treble of planks right at the end. “It’s one of those classes where you know what you're going to get, so nothing comes as too much of a shock,” she says. “I had quite a lot of training with Elliott Rowe – he got on well with Ruby and understood her quite quickly. He filled me with quite a lot of confidence.”
The pair had faulted at the second fence, but even with the four-second penalty added to their time, they still finished more than 3sec clear of their nearest rival. In a way, that early fence sharpened their determination, knowing they’d have to go really quick to stay in contention instead of focusing too much on delivering a clear round.
The Speed Derby features many of Hickstead’s iconic natural obstacles, including the Irish Bank, the less steep side of the Al Shira’aa Bank, the Road Crossing, and plenty of gates, hedges and ditches. But nothing seemed to faze Ella’s 10-year-old bay mare, who had previously hunted in Ireland. “Some horses see the crowd at Hickstead and can feel a bit lost in the arena, but Ruby thrives on that sort of atmosphere, she's so self-confident,” she adds.
Nor are rustic obstacles anything Ella hasn’t seen many times before. The Speed Derby might have been her first major showjumping win at the All England Jumping Course, but it’s far from her first Hickstead title – she grew up competing in top-level showing, and has won the Working Hunter Pony title at the Royal International.
“My Mum always wanted me to showjump, but I was never particularly brave, so I went for the middle ground with Working Hunter classes,” explains Ella, who was on the England Working Hunter Pony team eight years running.
She’s also evented up to three-star level, winning an intermediate section and finishing third in a CCI-S 3* in 2022 with Chantilly Amatullah. “I do get a good adrenaline buzz from the cross-country,” says Ella. “She was an amazing horse and I think there's couldn’t really be a better horse to go and learn with. She was so brave cross-country, she would give you loads of confidence.”
The mare went on to win at three-star and compete at four-star level with French rider Gaspard Maksud, something which gave Ella a lot of pride. It was then that showjumping became more of a focus for her. But which discipline she competes in tends to be influenced by the horses she has in to ride – the month before her Speed Derby win, Ella was competing at the I.C.E. Horseboxes All England Dressage Festival.
“We always bought and sold quite a lot, so we always had a lot of different horses coming in and out of the yard. I think that helps with my riding and understanding of how to adapt to new and different horses,” she says.
Previously, she was based at her grandparent’s family home in Tunbridge Wells. “We had no facilities whatsoever,” she explains. “So now I’ve moved to a new yard in Bury St Edmunds, and we have an arena so I can actually ride when it's raining!”
The yard belongs to Albanian rider Klodian Allajbeu, the former owner of Quality Rubies N Diamonds. Ella had begun riding the mare as a six-year-old, when she was owned by Dave Jones and Sue Walker from Duckhurst Farm, and the pair qualified for the Newcomers final at HOYS. She was then sold to Klodian, who competed her for a while before gifting her to Ella. “I had missed her quite a lot,” she recalls. “She’s very calm at home, and anybody could get on her and hack her. Nothing fazes her, but when she gets to a show, she definitely gets her blood up. When she's jumping, she's quite exuberant and just wants to do it for you. You don't have to give her any sort of encouragement.”
All that practice on grass and all that experience in the cross-country phase meant the Speed Derby was the perfect fit for the pair. “Doing lots of other disciplines is quite good for a class like the Speed Derby. It’s not your normal showjumping course in a square sand arena. Although it's an amazing arena with beautiful going, the gradient is bigger than you think, which makes it challenging.”
Winning was not only a reflection of Ella’s wide-ranging equestrian background, it was also vindication that she could make it in the sport of showjumping. “It made me realise I can actually give showjumping a go, because if I can win a class like the Speed Derby without too much time and practice, then who knows what we could achieve,” she adds.
Other ambitions on the list are winning the Cock o’ the North at the Great Yorkshire Show, doing some more under-25 classes, and in the future getting on to the Global Champions Tour. “Everybody wants to be at the Globals, don’t they? In the sunshine in Miami and places like that, but I think we're quite far away from that at the moment,” she reflects.
Having won the Speed Derby here, she’d like to have a go at the equivalent classes in Dublin and Hamburg. There’s also the possibility of a certain Al Shira’aa Derby – having ticked off one Hickstead victory, could she one day add our most famous class to her curriculum vitae?
Watch this space. In the meantime, she will be returning to the All England Jumping Course in a very different mindset to 12 months ago, the reigning champions instead of the nervous debutants. “It's more pressure definitely, but hopefully Ruby can have another go. I just need to get her a bit fitter – I actually had to kick on towards the end last year, which I don't usually have to do with her!”
Perhaps this year’s class won’t have quite such a dramatic finish as it did last summer, but whatever happens in the Speed Derby, it’s always enthralling to watch. For Ella, it’s unforgettable not because of the twist in the tale denouement, but because it gave her a standout first major win in the International Arena. “It’s great to win anywhere, but there’s something special about Hickstead. It has an amazing atmosphere, so when you ride under the arch and see the all the people in the crowd, it’s always a nice feeling.”
That viral moment
Harriet Biddick was on the poise of making history – if she could win the British Speed Derby, she would become the first woman to win the title four times, and Silver Lift would become the first horse to win three times.
After landing from the Irish Bank, Harriet took a pull in order to collect for the penultimate combination, and Silver Lift’s bridle slipped clean off his head. Without missing a beat, the pair continued through the tricky treble of Hickstead planks, and for a second it looked like Silver Lift might continue on to jump the final spread – in fairness, he probably knows the course pretty well by now.
But when he cantered past the last fence, Harriet lifted her hands in a shrug that perfectly reflected how the crowd were all feeling too. What on earth had just happened?
The video of the incident very quickly went viral, with an astounding 50 million views across social media. It was a new record, albeit not the one Harriet was hoping for! A photograph of Harriet, taken by Tilly Berendt, was later chosen as the British Equestrian Media Association’s moment of the year.
This article was first published in June 2024
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