A rider who repeatedly told staff and volunteers at Munstead to “F off” has been barred from competing there again.
Munstead organisers shared the incident at their unaffiliated hunter trial at the weekend to warn other local venues of the rider’s behaviour – and to make it clear to their volunteers that people treating them badly will not be tolerated.
Rebecca Harvie, who runs Munstead, Surrey, with her husband Rupert, told H&H she had never come across anyone so rude in nearly quarter of a century of running events.
“You might get the odd person who’s nervous and potentially is rude but then they apologise or it blows over and it’s fine,” she said. “But this one was something else.”
Rebecca said she was told by a jump judge that the rider knocked a flag off a fence accidentally while walking the course.
“The jump judge said could they put it back, and the rider turned round and told the judge to F off,” Rebecca said. “I was scoring, and had the judge on the radio, and thought ‘What?’!
“Rupert went to tell the rider to apologise, at which point they went off at the deep end and told him, repeatedly, to F off too. The rider said they were going to ride anyway, and Rupert said ‘No way, you’re not welcome here’, and they got on the horse and rode down to the warm-up. Seb, who works here, put the gate across but they pretty much rode through him.”
Rebecca said the rider was circling in the warm-up area, whether by accident or not, preventing others from jumping the practice fences, as the rudeness continued.
“Rob, who works here, was telling the rider to go home and ‘you’re not welcome’, and they were telling him to F off too,” Rebecca said. “He said ‘We don’t want you here’, and the rider said ‘You’ve got no right to be here either’, but he lives and works here!”
Eventually, Rebecca said, after other riders had also told the rude competitor the behaviour was unacceptable, the rider “muttered and swore” and rode away, “nearly taking out someone’s mother-in-law” on their way back to the lorry park.
Rebecca said she has found out that the rider has form for similar behaviour.
“You just think – you don’t behave like that, surely,” Rebecca said. “It wasn’t just one incident, it went on and on. Fortunately, that jump judge is pretty tough and wasn’t fazed but others might have been.
“We weren’t going to name and shame, we’re not going to that level, but we wanted to let other venues know, and to say to our volunteers: we won’t tolerate people being rude to you.
“Most competitors are lovely, but if something like this happens, we will act on it.”
Rebecca added that Munstead has had many messages of support, from competitors and volunteers. She said she has refunded the competitor’s mother, and told her the rider will not be welcome at the venue in future.
“One bad apple, as they say,” she said.
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