Soumillon International Pony Academy

Last Sunday, Christophe Soumillon was doing what he has become famed for: riding a Group 1 winner. In this case it was Diego Velazquez in the Aga Khan Studs Prix Jacques Le Marois for those celebrated racing names of Aidan O'Brien and Sam Sangster. Soumillon's name is of course equally celebrated, but as a young boy in Belgium, growing up riding ponies, the path to becoming a jockey wasn't always clear to him. To try to solve that problem for the budding riders coming up behind him, the ten-time champion...

The ten-time champion jockey in France sits down in a Deauville restaurant and starts speaking. For 45 minutes, Christophe Soumillon barely draws breath as he outlines in almost evangelical terms his plans to teach children to ride. His dream, of course, in establishing the Soumillon International Pony Academy, is to teach one or more of them to ride as well as he does. On Monday, the Société d'aménagement foncier et d'établissement rural (SAFER), a Normandy organisation charged with preserving green spaces, announced that Soumillon had beaten seven other applicants in...