By Erica Bridge
Staff sergeant Ben Moore, the talented horseman with a background in racing and the military died on 1 February, aged 44.
Ben grew up in Devon and his passion for horses first took him into racing as a conditional jockey with Martin Pipe. In 1999, he joined the Army and became a mounted gunner in the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery. Here he served a full and successful career, retiring only in June 2022 as a staff sergeant.
As a soldier, he rode at Larkhill a number of times, including winning, on a gun team horse in the Troop Race at the Royal Artillery point-to-point. He was a well-known face at Sandown Park from 2001 to 2004 when, as a gunner and then lance bombardier, he rode in the Grand Military Gold Cup and Royal Artillery Gold Cup, where he finished fourth on The late Queen’s Braes Of Mar, trained by Nicky Henderson, in 2001.
At the Troop, he was a lead driver of a gun team on a number of state ceremonial occasions and as a number one in charge of F subsection, he took part in the salute to open the Olympic Games in London, and rode on parade on the Diamond Jubilee.
Selected to become a riding instructor, he oversaw the rejuvenation of equestrian sport in the Royal Artillery as the senior military riding instructor at Larkhill, and later at the Defence Animal Centre at Melton Mowbray. He was highly competitive and won the Services showjumping at Olympia in 2017, and also rode in eventing and tent-pegging.
He returned to racing in 2017 and won the Pertemps Champions Willberry Charity Race at Cheltenham, to raise money for a cancer charity in support of his daughter who was suffering from leukaemia at the time. Ben had his own battle with cancer, which he fought incredibly bravely and patiently over a number of years, but it returned recently and he tragically lost the fight on 1 February 2023.
He leaves behind his partner Trish and his daughter Grace, and a great many friends in the world of racing and military equitation.
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