John WhitakerOlympian

About John Whitaker

John Whitaker MBE (born 5 August 1955) is one of the most successful and durable riders in the history of international showjumping — and, at 70, still competing at five-star level. The oldest of four brothers from a Yorkshire farming family, he and his brother Michael delivered milk by horse and cart as boys, and he was given his first great horse, Ryan's Son, at seventeen. His surname is Whitaker, with one 't'.

With Ryan's Son came the 1980 Alternative Olympics silvers, world team bronze in Dublin in 1982, double European silver at Hickstead in 1983, Olympic team silver at Los Angeles in 1984, the 1983 Hickstead Derby and the 1986 King George V Gold Cup. The partnership ended in the ring: Ryan's Son died after a fall in the 1987 Hickstead Derby. The pair were inducted together into the British Horse Society's Equestrian Hall of Fame in 2007.

Then came Milton, the grey with whom he is forever linked: European double gold at Rotterdam in 1989, back-to-back World Cup Final titles in 1990 and 1991, world individual silver at Stockholm, and a reputation as the first non-racehorse to pass a million pounds in prize money. Famously, Milton's owners withheld him from Seoul 1988 out of concern for the horse's welfare. Across the decades that followed, Whitaker won the Hickstead Derby four times on four different horses — a feat no other rider is reported to have matched — the King George V Gold Cup three times, Spruce Meadows' International Grand Prix three times and the Aachen Grand Prix twice, fifteen years apart.

His durability is the stuff of legend. In December 2000 he collapsed with a cerebral haemorrhage and underwent emergency brain surgery; five months later he was back on a Nations Cup team, and he went on to ride at three further Olympic Games — six IOC Games in all between 1984 and 2016. By event-level reconstruction he holds twenty IOC, World and European championship medals (twenty-two counting the 1980 Alternative Olympics), and British Showjumping recorded 193 Nations Cup appearances by 2022.

He remains a working horseman: Heyside Farm in Yorkshire, the family base since 1979, runs livery, young-horse production, stallions and sales with his wife Clare and daughters Louise and Joanne, while the John Whitaker International brand supplies equestrian equipment worldwide. In July 2026 he won a record seventh Cock O' the North title with the 18-year-old Unick Du Francport — 51 years after his first — and days later jumped the 1.60m King George V Gold Cup at Hickstead, a few days short of his 71st birthday. His riding is cited as a model of quiet economy and long-term horse preservation, and the Whitaker name — through his brothers, children, nieces and nephews — remains synonymous with British showjumping.