About Polly.....
It was almost inevitable that Polly Stockton (nee Clark) would end up pursuing a career involving horses - she literally learnt to ride before she could walk, both her parents competed and while her father, Sir Jonathan Clark, remains a BE Steward, her mother, Sue, is Chair of the JRN programme and the JRN selection committee.
Polly first started to ‘learn her trade’ through her local Pony Club and the JRN programme. She didn’t really have a Junior horse, so it was her Young Rider horse, Poggio, who gave Polly her first real taste of success when they were part of the gold medal winning team at the European Championships in 1995 and finished sixth individually. The pair also completed Badminton and Burghley.
Arthur Comyn, still a loyal owner of Polly’s to this day, then offered her the rides on Westlord and the former Andrew Nicholson ride All Black. Coupled with her own The Tonka Toy and Jane Starkey’s Davy, Polly then really started to make a name for herself on the eventing circuit with good results at Punchestown, Bramham, Aschelswang and Burghley. She was then lucky enough to take over the rides of Mary Rose Cooney’s Eye Spy II and Word For Word when Mark Todd retired to Australia and Oscar, the former ride of Chris Bartle, all of whom helped her establish herself as a force to be reckoned with at 4* level.
She came tantalisingly close to winning Kentucky CCI*** in 2003 with her own Tangleman but was pipped to the post by Pippa Funnell en route to her historic Rolex Grand Slam. She is a current member of the UK World Class programme and is long-listed for the 2008 Olympic Games with Anne Henson’s Tom Quigley and has a talented string of less-experienced horses waiting in the wings.