Equestrian: Bricklayer spices up circuit

Jonathan Paget riding Clifton Razz competes in the cross country. Photo / Getty Images

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 something a bit different, and it's not just because of his Australian-laced accent and the occasional profanity.

But he's learned how to adapt and 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 thought trying to hang onto a bucking bronco for eight seconds would help. It was also a good way to have a few more beers with some of his mates.

But Paget wanted more. He was a qualified bricklayer by now and decided to take a year off 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 so I thought it would be a nicer way to work with them as opposed to trying to buck them out. 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, USA, 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 layed 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. "It was a little bit weird, pretty random."

Paget is one of the leading contenders at the Puhinui three-day event that started today (Fri), although he's riding one of his more inexperienced horses, Clifton Airtight, to give him valuable experience. He's also riding three horses he refers to as "babies" in the lower classes.

His rodeo background helps him at times.

"I think sometimes when things get a little wild or ugly you revert back to your ways and I think I revert back to my bronc-riding days," he says.

It's unlikely he will revert back to his bricklaying ways, though.