The 60th Al Shira'aa Derby takes place in June 2022. Victoria Goff looks back on the history of Hickstead's most famous class
When the very first Hickstead Derby took place in 1961, the All England Jumping Course had been open for just over a year.
The showground was very much still in its infancy - the International Arena was surrounded by just one marquee, and the select number of gathered spectators could set up a picnic or park their car right by the ringside. There were just a few tradestands to tempt shoppers, while the ‘press office’ was a telephone nailed to a fence post with a bale of straw for journalists to sit on.
But plenty of what has made Hickstead such an enduring success was evident right from the very start. The huge International Arena, with its unique fences and gradients, was unlike anything ever seen in Britain. The ability to get close up to showjumping’s megastars – both human and equine – and to watch unforgettable sporting moments. The atmosphere that blended a stadium sport with a casual country setting that was more often associated with a horse trials or point-to-point, and its location in the beautiful Sussex countryside, accessible from London and close to the ferry ports and Gatwick airport.
The success of Hickstead is due to the vision and determination of one man, Douglas Bunn. Born in Selsey in 1928, Douglas grew up on his family farm near the scenic Sussex coastline. He inherited his father’s love of horses and began riding at an early age, going on to compete in local gymkhanas and horse shows. His talent was obvious from the start, and he was undoubtedly bitten by the showjumping bug – an affliction he would never recover from.
The outbreak of World War II put Douglas’s equestrian ambitions on temporary hold, and the Army took all but four of the family’s 40 horses for the war effort. In 1944, Bunn returned to the showjumping ring and continued with his competitive aspirations, even during his law studies at Trinity College, Cambridge. Later he was called up to the bar, and it wasn’t unusual to spot him wearing white breeches under his barristers’ gown!
His legal career continued alongside his other career in the saddle, and in the 1950s he was a regular part of the British showjumping team. Trips abroad brought home the fact that Great Britain’s riders were not having the same sort of success on the continent that they were at home, and Douglas realised that if the Brits were to raise their game on the international stage, they would need a purpose-built showground on home soil. The idea for Hickstead was born.
Shortly after opening his first caravan park in Selsey – which would provide his main income and allow him to develop his equestrian pursuits – Douglas bought Hickstead Place and its surrounding 30 acres. A further purchase of a neighbouring farm took the total acreage of land up to 100 acres, and after a busy winter of preparations the All England Jumping Course was ready and open for business.
But despite having complained about the lack of a permanent British showground, riders were cautious about coming to this new fixture – so much so that Douglas Bunn had to phone round everyone he knew to persuade them to enter. Nor did it help that the first show clashed with Princess Margaret’s wedding, as well as the FA Cup Final. After Douglas’s impassioned pleas for people to enter the show, he managed to get about 30 riders to compete. Somewhat concerningly, the first six horses to jump in the International Arena all failed to get round, which proved Douglas’s point that British horses were never going to shine on the world stage if they couldn’t perform well on home turf.
Despite an inauspicious start, Hickstead quickly gained in popularity, and its second fixture began to attract entries from some of the names who would go on to dominate in the sport, including David Broome and Marion Mould. It wasn’t just the addition of permanent fences that made the showground unique – Douglas also wanted to improve the quality of the design and structure of all fences, making them less flimsy, more of a challenge to clear, and more appealing to spectators. Crowd sizes were growing, and riders began flocking to West Sussex from all around the country and beyond.
At the end of the first season, Douglas came up with the idea of holding a British Jumping Derby, having been inspired by seeing some newsreel footage of the Hamburg Derby at the cinema. He wanted to create the sort of iconic competition that the public could take to its heart, showjumping’s version of the Boat Race or the Grand National.
On New Year’s Eve 1960, Douglas flew to Germany during a snowstorm to measure the Derby course at the Hamburg showground, much to the bemusement of show officials. On his return to Hickstead, he set about building a Derby Bank at Hickstead, which ended up being some nine inches taller than its German counterpart. Perhaps this was down to the falling snow making for inaccurate measurements, or maybe it was simply Bunn’s desire to have the biggest and best of everything.
But the Bank was initially met with disapproval from some, who felt it didn’t really belong in showjumping. When it was first used in competition, at the fixture before the Derby, riders were outraged – even though they only had to go down the less steep side of the Bank. Despite this, a month later, around 60 entries came forward for the first ever British Jumping Derby. Seamus Hayes, one of Ireland’s best showjumpers, travelled over to West Sussex to take part, and announced to his fellow competitors that he had “come to show them all how to jump the bloody bank!” He did just that, going on to win with the only clear round on Goodbye III.
The Bank is the Derby’s most famous obstacle, but what makes the Derby such a challenge to jump, and so thrilling to watch, is that the entire course is formidable from start to finish. At the Public Course Walk, spectators have the chance to see just how huge the course is, with some fences set at 1.60m high and others reaching 2m in width, requiring enormous scope to clear. Other jumps require bravery – from the Cornishman stone wall at the onset, the double of water ditches, the open ditch, the vast open water, the quirky road crossing and the fearsome Devil’s Dyke, widely regarded as the most difficult obstacle of all. The course is much longer than other showjumping classes, with 16 fences and 23 jumping efforts, and a maximum time allowed of 180sec, meaning a good Derby horse must have stamina too.
If courses are the time were too flimsy and uninspiring, the Derby was the polar opposite. Douglas took inspiration from the hunting field and from local landscapes. The Devil's Dyke was based on a local tourist attraction, a valley in the South Downs, while the Derby rails are based along some rails he saw when driving along the Bagshot Bypass. There are several gates in the Derby course, as Douglas wanted to include fences that people could identify with - they'd know how big a five bar gate is and could appreciate its size, compared to just endless coloured poles.
Six decades on from that first Derby, the course has barely changed at all aside from some modern safety alterations – the top rails have all been switched to lightweight versions, and safety cups have replaced the old metal ones. It is a measure of how difficult the Derby is that there have only been 64 clear rounds in total.
This week, as spectators arrive for the 60th Al Shira’aa Hickstead Derby Meeting, they will pass by a sculpture of Douglas Bunn that was unveiled in 2012. He is depicted riding his most famous horse, Beethoven, and it summarises so much about Bunn – his love of showjumping, his success as a rider and producer of horses, and his pride when Beethoven went on to give Great Britain its only world championship title with the great David Broome.
This tribute to our founder pays welcome each year to those who continue to flock to Hickstead some six decades after the gates first swung open, and it takes pride of place right next to the Longines International Arena, the true realisation of Douglas Bunn’s dream. The immaculate sweep of turf, the scene of hundreds of showjumping’s greatest moments, its history woven into the very tapestry of our sport.
This Sunday, the International Arena will play host to one of the most famous classes in showjumping. It’s a class that has done so much to raise the profile of the sport, a class that has inspired countless young people to take up riding, and a class with a roll call of champions that reads like a who’s who of international showjumping: the awe-inspiring, incomparable Hickstead Derby.
This article first appeared in June 2022
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