WHEN Jess Dunn declared for Ireland earlier this year, the Lancashire-based dressage rider had already achieved her FEI qualification for the 2026 World Championships in Aachen with Jennifer Whitaker’s Dan Its Carsten. After a top-10 finish in the Grand Prix Special at Lier CDI3* on her first outing wearing the Irish flag, and a subsequent seventh place finish on 69.50% in the Grand Prix at the Aachen Dressage Days show last month, she is on track to achieve her goal of competing there.

The self-effacing 36-year-old, who admits she sometimes lacks self-confidence, says: “I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself, because I feel like I’m tempting fate a little bit and who knows what will happen, but the way that the horse is going, he’s showing so much potential and I get such a good feeling from him, that I would like to think that we could get to the World Championships at the end of the year. A lot of things could happen during that time though, so I want to enjoy the process of becoming eligible for selection, and I want to do ourselves justice. After that, it’s out of my hands. That would be my aim for this year.”

While Jess spent her childhood around horses, her earliest memories have nothing to do with dressage. “My mum worked in hunting and racing and point-to-pointing as a groom and a rider, and I went to most of the race meetings with her when I was little. She always recounts a story of me when I was three or four years old, lugging a weight cloth around a show ground. I got my first pony when I was one. He was also very young, maybe two, and he was the naughtiest, most devilish pony I have ever come across to this day. I had him for seven years and, by the time I was three or four, he had had me off so many times. How anyone ever thought he was a lead rein pony- he was a nightmare! He did teach me to stick on and he taught me to ride, but he was an absolute devil.”

Jess Dunn in the early years

Having the basics right

“Then I got a 12.2hh called Billy. Had he been a horse, I could have been a millionaire. He had the heart of a lion and the most incredibly quick brain. He was unbacked when we got him, and we couldn’t try him when we bought him because the owner thought he was too sharp for a kid. I fell off him every day for a year, but after that first year he was the most unbelievable pony in the world. He set me up for life really, because he taught me so much about patience and schooling and the importance of flatwork and having the basics right. He was the first pony I had to learn to understand and develop a relationship with, which has been a theme throughout my career.

“Up until my teenage years, I was mainly focused on eventing and I thought that would be my career path. I wanted to ride at Badminton and I wanted to make eventing my life. Unfortunately, the pony I had at the time had an injury that ended his career. We didn’t have any money, so we just bought a really cheap pony from Ireland, and she was supposed to be a project to produce for eventing, but she wasn’t very good at jumping. I had to learn how to do dressage on her and she was great really for that. She didn’t turn out to be anything special, but she was a lovely pony and she taught me a lot. She gave me the bug, which set me up for where I am now really.”

The Youth Olympics

Having progressed through the British Dressage Young Riders’ Scheme (BYRDS) and ridden on teams at Home Internationals, Jess was selected to the British dressage team which attended the Youth Olympic Festival in Australia in 2009. Instead of a typical championship format where riders would compete their own horses, the Youth Olympic format involved riding borrowed horses, with whom the riders were given three days to work before the competition began.

“The Youth Olympics was a major shock to be honest. When I got the call to say ‘we’re thinking of putting a team together and you’re shortlisted’, I thought ‘that’s crazy’! Then, when I found out it was being held in Australia and that I would have to borrow a horse out there and get to know it with only three days’ practice, it seemed crazier still. It was such a great opportunity, but it was quite daunting, to be fair. Our trainer was Gareth Hughes, who I hadn’t worked with up until that point, so that was really exciting too, to gain knowledge from him and get his help while we were over there.”

The trip was a huge success, and Jess came home with team gold and individual bronze, but the overall experience meant more to her than the medals. “I had really lovely team mates, Charlie Hutton and Emily Cousins. We got on really well and we had a lot of fun. We travelled over there with the show jumpers Dan Nielson, William Whitaker, Matt Sampson and Louise Saywell, and they were just so much fun and such a good bunch of people to be around. I always remember watching Will ride one of the jumpers. It was six weeks off the track and it had barely had any jumping education and he was just amazing with it. It was a masterclass in riding and educating horses. I was in awe of his talent at the age that we were. It was a great experience.”

Jess Dunn was not always flatwork focused

Whitehill Stud

After some time spent riding for Wolfram Wittig in Germany, Jess is now based at Whitehill Stud, Jennifer Whitaker’s 100-acre property set in the Ribble Valley in rural Lancashire. The facility, which Whitaker established nine years ago, includes indoor and outdoor arenas, a canter track and a lunge pen, 20 stables and an equine spa. “Jen built Whitehill with the intention of having all her horses in one place, because she had a couple of broodmares and a couple of ridden horses and they were dotted around at various different locations. She wanted them all under one roof, so she could look after them and be really involved in their day-to-day training and care.

“I started working for Jen on the yard in 2019, when she had a big broodmare operation going on and was breeding 10 foals a year, which becomes a lot of horses very quickly. She decided that was far too much and scaled down massively over the next couple of years. We’re now left with quite a few of her home-breds, which is really lovely because they’re all at the start of their careers or a few years in, and they’re all showing such potential and trainability. They’re all lovely characters, and it’s been a real pleasure to take them on and oversee their training. Even though it’s a much smaller operation than it was, we still have 23 horses on the yard, with a couple more three-year-olds who need to be backed this year. It’s a lot to get through in a day, but we have a great team on the yard, so it’s both exhausting and enjoyable!

“I have nine horses under my personal umbrella to ride and compete for Jen. They range from ‘Danny’ (the horse qualified for the World Championships) through to a couple of small tour horses down to some young ones.” ‘Danny’ was bred and produced by Benjamin Andrew, and Whitaker acquired him in 2022. “We happened on him really, he came to a clinic with another rider and we saw him and thought ‘he’s really cool’. The older Grand Prix horse I was riding for Jen at the time [Alicante Valley, with whom Jess enjoyed CDI success] was reaching retirement, and Danny just fell into place. He was a green advanced medium horse when I got him, but he’d been produced so nicely that I was able to carry on up the levels.

“I have the two small tour horses, and then I have a lovely advanced medium horse called Funtime Frankie, by Franziskus. He’s tiny, he’s only just 16hh, but he’s a home-bred and an absolute winning machine. He’s won numerous regional titles from prelim through to medium, and he’s won at every single high-profile show he’s done. He even did his first-ever advanced medium at a high-profile show last weekend and he still won! His way of going is delightful and he’s going to be a super cool small tour horse. I also have lovely young horses, particularly a Furstenball six-year-old and a Jameson five-year-old, and I’m really excited about them. I’m not the bravest. Especially since having my little boy, I’m not as brave as I used to be, but they’re all lovely characters, so for the most part, I’m pretty safe.

“I feel like my goals change quite a lot. I have certain goals with certain horses, who are probably not Olympic prospects, and I just want them to be well-trained and have nice lives. Personally though, since I’ve been five years old I have wanted to be an Olympic rider and, for a long time, I thought ‘I don’t know if that’s going to be a reality’. It takes so much hard work, and it takes a bit of luck and these days it takes quite a bit of money behind you. I have never really had that money, so for a long time I accepted that I could do internationals maybe and that I needed to be happy with that, because not everyone gets the opportunity to have a horse who could get you up there with the best of them. I’d really like to aim for the Olympics really, but you know, if it doesn’t happen that’s also fine.”

Jess Dunn at Myerscough High Profile Show (UK), where she won the AM5 and M6 with WHS Funtime Frankie\ Lottie Christian

Take every opportunity

When Jess is asked what advice she’d like to give her younger self or other young riders, she says immediately: “Be brave and take every opportunity that’s given to you. When I worked for Herr Wittig in Germany, I think that sadly, I was too shy to get enough out of it. If I could go back in time, I would tell myself to ask more questions, although he taught me really strong foundations and gave me great structure in my training. He also made me a bit tougher, and still now he gives me helpful advice and is happy to give feedback after watching my videos.

“The things I regret most in my career come from lacking confidence or thinking I’m not worthy of an opportunity. I have definitely been guilty of hanging back and not taking chances. There’s a saying in the Cinderella movie, ‘be brave and have courage’ and a really good friend of mine, [British U25 team medallist] Charlotte Lutener, we say it to each other before every big show, because it’s one of our favourite feel-good films. It’s really cheesy and it makes us smile, but it also makes me think of being a bit more single-minded, it makes me go for what I want.” With that positive attitude, there’s every chance we’ll see Jess head down the centre line in Aachen this summer.

Did you know?

  • Who better to be an early influence on your dressage career than FEI five-star and Olympic judge, Stephen Clarke? “Stephen was a massive influence on me during my teenage years. We were stabled on his yard, and he gave me lots of lessons and guidance and he let me ride some of his schoolmasters. He gave me little snippets of advice that have stuck with me, little bits of positivity, and I owe a lot of my achievements to him. Without him gently pushing behind the scenes, a lot of my career wouldn’t have happened.”
  • *It could be said that dressage riders devote more time than riders from other disciplines to training at home, but Jess feels that having competitive goals is important to maintain motivation. “I’ve always enjoyed competing; I have to have a goal and something to work towards. I like the buzz competing brings, and I know I’m not a person who can train endlessly. Plus, you learn things every time you go out.”
  • *What made Jess apply for an Irish passport? “My grandma on my dad’s side is Irish, and I have lots of family who still live in Killiney. My favourite team competitions as a youth rider were the Home Internationals in Marlton Stud, Co Wicklow, because my whole family would come and see me ride and support. It’s something we’ve talked about for a long time, but the paperwork has always seemed like an insurmountable challenge. Then I finally thought, you know what, I think it’d be a good idea.
  • “It was a quite a long process. I had to get hold of lots of original documents. It was quite hard to get my nana’s original birth certificate and her original marriage certificate and everything else that was required. I was very stressed about it, because I was nervous about filling out forms incorrectly or being refused. I feel like I’m a good role model and a good citizen though!
  • “I’m really proud of my Irish heritage and it’s one of my favourite places in the world. I haven’t been that much recently, but it is somewhere I always try to get back to as regularly as possible. I am desperate for my little boy to be old enough so that I can take him and show him all the places where I love to go. My dad spent a lot of his childhood there and he’s got loads of great stories and places where he would love to take me and Dougie too. I have a real connection with the place.”