Paul White
Editor and Director
Age: 25
Location: Lancashire
Other interests: Food, gin, politics and strong blue cheese
Favourite Eventing moment: My favourite Eventing moment happens (hopefully!) twice annually. It is when I’m at Skipton, coffee in hand, silence all around just before the gates open to the public. It is such a great feeling. As a one off event it would have to be winning British Eventing’s Young Volunteer of the Year award.
What is your favourite one-day event? The ones I or my friends organise! Skipton, Hutton, Firle Place and Allerton Park!
What is your favourite International event? Bramham.
Which four team members would be in your multi-national fantasy Olympic eventing team? I’d like to see Ian Stark make a return and Mary King, Andrew Nicholson and Michael Jung.
Favourite quotations: “If you can’t be good, be good at it!” and “I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near”, Thatcher.
Email: paul@eventingworldwide.com
Website: Click here
Facebook fan page: Click here
Essential piece of kit: AppleMac, BlackBerry and twenty Marlboro Lights.
People and horses who inspire me: Soppy as it is, my parents and grandfather have been huge inspirations. Louise Elliott too, for encouraging me to give up a promising career in favour of horses. Toytown would have to be my inspirational horse, from Pony Club to European Champion is a fair achievement.
Biog:
I’ve grown up around horses all my life with my mother and grandparents having horses, and I progressed up through the Pony Club under the careful and often despairing eye of Chris McGrann. My family have always been equine orientated, and indeed my grandfather was a riding instructor in the Royal Air Force, which I’ve never quite been able to get my head round. Why would you need to be able to ride a horse on a plane?
Then during my teen years I discovered nightclubs and money of my own. That was where my association with horses stopped, and it wouldn’t be until my university years I’d be back in touch with them apart from the occasional hack when there was nobody to ride at home.
After all the usual school shenanigans I went to Harper Adams University College in Shropshire to read BSc Hons Rural Land Management and graduated in 2009. Whilst there I met Louise Elliott, now my long suffering business partner. Our eyes met through a smoke filled room…The SU bar!
Lou and I served on the Student’s Union together, and even spent three years living together, (in a separate rooms sort of a way!), both surviving almost unscathed. Whilst doing my Finals, I became the youngest British Eventing Organiser in the UK at Skipton Horse Trials, an accolade I still hold to this day (even though I now have grey hair!).
After University I went off to the Lake District where I worked for the National Trust as an Assistant Rural Surveyor, but life with Peter Rabbit wasn’t to be. On Christmas Eve last year I left my job, and on 31st December 2010 (with annual anniversary parties in mind) EW Sporting Limited was formed by myself and Lou. The company specialises in event and athlete PR and marketing, and when we saw an opening with Eventing Worldwide we made the decision that EW Sporting couldn’t afford to not seize the opportunity, so here we are!
