Winning is Everything Part II Autobiography Sheila Willcox - Tapa blanda

This is the sequel of Sheila’s life which picks up from her wedding and runs until her death in 2017. She suffered from Alzheimer’s and her family have arranged that 20% of the profits of these e-books should go to an Alzheimer’s charity.e, deciding what to include and what not. The sheer volume of the manuscripts was daunting. I have not included the surnames of her lovers who were all married, wishing to protect their families. She is very frank and truthful when it came to her sex life and I have followed her wishes and included such details. It would appear that she was as athletic in bed as she was in the sporting arena, up until her accident in 1971. One can see why she was referred to as a ‘glamour girl’. As a young woman Sheila had been a staunch Catholic and it was this that prevented her from marrying her much older married lover when she was still a girl. Later on, when she was divorced from John Waddington she felt rejected by the church and lost her faith. One of her best friends regularly ‘used a pendulum’ to communicate with the ‘spirits’ and although Sheila went along with this she didn’t really believe. I have included two momentous occasions when Sheila drugged her horses, once using a sedative and the other time using ‘go faster powder’. It is important to remember the social context at this time when it was considered perfectly normal to dose a horse with bute so he could compete and there was no scientific understanding of tranquilisers and amphetamines. It was more part of an old-fashioned country lore that was passed down through generations of horsemen such as Bert Cleminson.A more contentious practice that Sheila regularly carried out, with no demur or apology, was rapping. This is now a banned practice and, quite rightly, decried by all serious and intelligent horse people. Rather than judge her too harshly for this it is important to remember that it was quite a conventional training method in its time.Sheila’s life connected with some famous contemporary horse people. One example is Mary King, who as a young girl went to Sheila’s stables to be rigorously trained for three years. Mary devotes a whole chapter entitled “The Sheila Willcox Years” in her autobiography Mary King: the autobiography published in 2009 by Orion. Mary’s account of Sheila is well-written and accurate. Sheila was also closely involved with the Bechtolsheimers going to live at their place in Germany before they moved to England. She helped them train their horses, and also instructed Wilfried when he was younger and hoping to compete in eventing. Their youngest daughter, Laura Tomlinson, was only a baby at that stage.To many Sheila is an icon in the eventing world and I hope that this autobiography does not take the shine off her public image. She was also known as being hard-hearted – “She could be so very kind but if you got in the way of her winning God help you!” Her ex-husband, John Waddington, summed her up as very extreme – “If she thought you were not with her she assumed you were against her.” After immersing myself in the mind of Sheila for over a year now I believe that she was a complex person. Undoubtedly, she was very intelligent, but without the benefit of tertiary education which might have helped her to discern subtlety and different facets of opinion and belief. When it came to men Sheila was really quite clueless! She seemed to view the whole male-female dynamic as some sort of horse competition where if she was beautiful, entertaining and good in bed she would win the prizes. She seemed to entirely disregard the feelings of her lovers’ wives but when her own husband indulged in a little public flirtation that would have gone nowhere, she publicly punched him in the face.However, one cannot deny that she was a horsewoman of undeniable ability and in that way can be an inspiration to many. She knew her horses and she knew how to train dressage horses and eventers.