At 35, Monica Spencer is a world champs debutant in the NZ eventing team competing in Italy. Becoming a new mum hasn't broken her stride, either, she tells Suzanne McFadden.
In the stables of Aston Farm - within the sprawling estate of Anne, the Princess Royal - Monica Spencer laughs at where she came from to get this far.
To prepare for her first world eventing championships in Pratoni, Italy, next week, Spencer rode her horse, Artist, around a cow paddock on her neighbour’s dairy farm in Taupo.
“It’s quite a big change,” the 35-year-old Kiwi eventer laughs.
Aston Farm is set within Princess Anne’s Gatcombe Park estate in the heart of the Cotswolds. It’s where her daughter, Olympic eventing silver medallist Zara Tindall, lives with her family.
“It’s gorgeous here,” Spencer says from one of the large barns. “All the buildings are made from Cotswold stone; there are indoor riding arenas and all-weather gallops.
“It’s a long way from home – but a big shout-out to Roger Garland for letting me use his paddock next door to get my horse fit.”
Spencer admits being “a little bit starstruck” bumping into Zara Tindall, the 2006 world eventing champion, who was taking her daughter riding. “I awkwardly said: ‘Hi Zara, I’m Monica from New Zealand’, and she was lovely. They’ve all been very welcoming,” she says.
The invitation to settle-in at Aston Farm – coming from our winter to the Northern Hemisphere summer – came from Clarke Johnstone, Spencer’s team-mate at these world championships, who has taken her under his wing.
A New Zealand eventing veteran, Johnstone has been based at Aston Farm for most of the year, and will ride Menlo Park at Pratoni. (Johnstone was in the team the last time New Zealand was on the world champs podium, winning bronze back in 2010.)
Also in the Kiwi team are experienced husband and wife, Tim and Jonelle Price, who finished third and fourth respectively at the Burghley Horse Trials yesterday, and another debutant, Amanda Pottinger (whose mum, Tinks, won Olympic eventing team bronze in 1988).
This is Spencer’s first time in a ‘championship’ team for New Zealand - she's competed in Trans-Tasman teams before - and she’s trying not to let the enormousness of it all get on top of her.
Because while she’s on the verge of the biggest moment in her eventing career aboard the horse she calls Max, she’s also missing the most important “little dude” in her life – her nine-month-old son, Gus.
Monica and Andrew Spencer with their "boys" - horse Artist, and son Gus.
She calls home twice a day to talk to Gus and his dad, Spencer’s husband Andrew. “I miss them a lot,” she says. “Gus can’t understand why Mum is stuck in the phone.
“It was a hard decision to leave him behind, but at only nine months old, it was going to be pretty hard on him. It’s good to be able to focus here while I know he’s happy back at home.”
Andrew – better known as Spence - is flying over this week to join her, while little Gus will stay with Spencer’s mum.
Becoming a mother hasn’t greatly impacted on Spencer’s competitive career or her business, running a 13-hectare equestrian property in Taupo with 20 horses, with the help of head girl Jade Urbahn.
“He's really only changed things for the better,” she says. “Gus gets passed around. I’ll ride for half a day and Spence, who has his own law firm, will look after him, then I’m outside doing jobs I’ll have Gus. He’s such a cruisy little dude - he’s been an awesome addition.”
Coming back from six months off riding while she was pregnant, Spencer admits she had some concerns.
“You worry about ‘Will I be able to see a distance [placing the horse to successfully make the jump]? Will I still be brave?’” Spencer says.
“You’re only as brave as what you’re sitting on, because it’s very much a partnership. But yes, I’m still confident and I haven’t had any trouble since I’ve been back.”
Although riding at a world championships or an Olympics is every eventer's dream, it’s only been a realistic ambition for Spencer in the past five years.
“I’m 35, but I’m sort of new to the high performance side of our sport,” she says.
As Monica Oakley, she grew up on a lifestyle block in Reikorangi Valley on the Kapiti Coast, where she rode pony club and her mum produced ponies. That became part of her own passion.
After leaving school and riding trackwork for racehorses, she found her first real eventing horse in a retired racing thoroughbred named Fontain. Together they won the Puhinui Horse Trials in 2013.
“I did eventing, but until I was 30, I was mainly producing and selling horses,” Spencer explains. That was until Olympic bronze medallist Jock Paget and long-time New Zealand eventing coach Erik Duvander had a word to her.
“They told me ‘You’re really good, you should give it a proper go – and stop selling all your horses’,” she laughs. “So since I made the decision to give it a proper go, it’s been full on training. And now here I am.”
Spencer came close to making the New Zealand team for last year’s Tokyo Olympics on another “very special horse”, Acrobat, until he was injured.
“As far as talent goes, he might have been up one on Artist. But trainability and ride-ability and willingness to do your job – and not getting injured – all come into getting a horse this far, too,” she says.
Spencer has owned 11-year-old Artist, or Max, since he was four, and quickly recognised that the thoroughbred (who trialled as racehorse but never made the track) had the ability to be an eventing champion. Together they won the Puhinui International CCI3*-L three-day event in 2019, and took that up a notch the following year, winning the Puhinui CCI4*-L, pushing Olympian Johnstone back into second place.
In June, they were third in the Trans-Tasman clash at the Melbourne International Three-Day four-star event at Werribee.
“He’s been pretty smooth sailing through his career, a relaxed kind of guy,” Spencer says of Artist. “And I’m just so proud to have made it to this level with him.”
Monica Spencer kisses Artist, aka Max, after winning the 4* at February's Randlab Matamata Horse Trials
After a 50-hour journey, with three stopovers, just to get to England, Artist took little time to get back to work - on royal grounds. “He’s was a little picky when we arrived. You know the saying: You can lead a horse to water? Well it’s the same with food,” Spencer says.
And she’s confident Artist will rise to the occasion when he enters the dressage ring at Pratoni, near Rome, Thursday week. The same venue hosted the cross country for the 1960 Olympic Games.
“We’re all speculating when we try to tell you what a horse is thinking,” Spencer says. “But they know when you’re in a bigger atmosphere, and they know when it counts. And you hope they perform well and use all the energy in the right way, because it can so easily go wrong, too.”
The same can be said about their riders. And Spencer has her own nerves to quell.
“I’m trying to remind myself that it’s incredible to have made it this far, and to enjoy the journey. Little old me from down in New Zealand made this trip all the way up here,” she says.
“Hopefully this goes well and we can aim for the [2024] Paris Olympics.
“I’m still probably considered young and I’m 35. And that just shows how hard this sport is to master - you’re always learning and getting better, in a sport where I don’t think you ever learn everything. It’s always striving for that extra inch. But it’s very satisfying.”
