Equestrian: Brickie bucks the trend

Jonathan Paget is on the verge of joining the eventing team for the London Olympics. Pihoto / Sarah Ivey

Equestrian has an image as a sport for the elite, so a former bricklayer with a background in rodeo riding stands out like a grey gelding in a field of black stallions.

Jonathan Paget is on the verge of joining Mark Todd, Andrew Nicholson and Caroline Powell in the New Zealand equestrian team for the London Olympics.

That seemed a ridiculous suggestion a few short years ago when he was laying bricks on building sites in Sydney, where he had lived since moving to Australia as a child.

He might still be doing it had his father not bought a lifestyle block on the outskirts of Sydney and furnished it with a horse.

"I just started bush riding with my dad," the 28-year-old says. "It was a great way to spend a weekend - go for a ride and have a few beers and hang out. There were a whole bunch of people who did it with us and it just went from there."

Where it took him was rodeo school. He wanted to learn how to improve his riding and thought trying to hang on to a bucking bronco for eight seconds would help.

But Paget wanted more and decided to take a year off bricklaying and work at an event yard.

"I love working with the horses and rodeo wasn't a good way to work with the horses at all," he says. "There's not much of a relationship with a horse when you were bucking them out of a chute for eight seconds ... I just like the lifestyle of being with horses all day. It was hard work but it didn't feel like work at the time."

He was spotted by former Olympian Heleen Tompkins and recommended to Frances Stead, who owned Clifton Eventers. He still rides her horses and has qualified four for London.

In less than two years, he went from never having jumped a fence to competing at three-star eventing level (the second-highest level). In 2008/09 he was the nation's leading event rider, in 2010 was seventh at the world equestrian championships in Kentucky and this year helped the New Zealand team to second at the world equestrian festival in Germany.

Paget is well ensconced in the eventing circuit but accepts he's different. "I'm a bricklayer who rides a horse," he says.

"Most of these guys have been brought up differently. I try to fit in but I grew up in Sydney in the suburbs and laid bricks. I didn't grow up in a dressage saddle."

It also meant he "copped a bit of shit" from his mates for a while.

Paget says his rodeo background helps him at times "when things get a little wild or ugly".

•Donna Smith and Just Chocolate hold a narrow lead over Paget and Clifton Airtight after the dressage at the Puhinui three-day event which started yesterday.

Smith achieved a score of 51 penalties after the dressage to lead ahead of Paget, who scored 53.4.