when a horse and rider partnership with a combined age of 82 jumped clear cross-country at Chepstow Horse Trials it was a remarkable achievement in more ways than one.

For 65-year-old Gill Suttle it was both the opportunity to celebrate a unique sporthorse breeding programme and the rebuilding of her entire life.

When Gill, who lives near Monmouth, finished 7th representing Britain in the 1979 Modern Pentathlon World Championships, she never imagined that within a few years she would be barely able to climb her own stairs.

The illness that ended her sporting career, which had also embraced national-level running and advanced level eventing, was ME (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis). It also ended her teaching career, leaving her looking for a way to make a living while dealing with an incapacitating illness.

She decided to combine her interests in travel and horses via travel writing and produced two books from the perspective of the disabled traveller.

"After that I travelled solo around Syria riding an Arab stallion, writing up the journey ’Between the Desert and the Deep Blue Sea’. My follow-up, ’Black Sands and Celestial Horses’, about Akhal-Teke horses in Turkmenistan, was based on another solo, horseback journey along part of the Silk Road - a trip that had life-changing consequences."

Gill realised that, on her return home, her travel companion, a former racehorse called Atamekan (Kaan), would expect at best a short and miserable life on one of the collective farms left over from Soviet Union days. So she spent two years finding a way to bring him back to the UK.

"I was just in time, for Kaan was close to starving," she said. "His 13-month, 3,000 mile journey overland (plus crossing the Caspian Sea and the Channel) brought him to Herefordshire on July 5th, 1999 . And so began the second half of both our lives!"

Undistinguished as a second-string, often underfed racehorse in Turkmenistan, Kaan blossomed, discovering an ability to jump which thrilled him. But with Gill unable to realise this ability because of her own incapacity, she launched him as a stud stallion.

Kaan’s offspring prospered in a range of disciplines - endurance racing, eventing, showing and point-to-point racing. Among the brightest and best was his son Tedzhen (’Teddy’).

"I was hoping I’d be fit to ride Teddy by the time he was five but I had to wait a further ten long years!"

Sadly, in the interim, Kaan broke a leg in his field and had to be euthanased - ’the worst possible blow’. And, just as Gill was beginning to use his son Xanadu, a classic, golden Akhal-Teke, at stud, her plans were mothballed for another two years when she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis.

Meanwhile Ainur, Teddy’s sister, was winning at multiple disciplines with her young riders, Rosalie Shepherd and Jessica Hassell, while other progeny won endurance races and national showing championships.

Finally Gill’s life changed for the better thanks to ME specialist Dr Sarah Myhill, herself a British open champion team chase rider. Riding in wrist splints, Gill cautiously entered Ainur in small show jumping classes at local shows, gradually progressing to cross-country. And, finally she was strong enough to compete on Tedzhen. Last October she contested her first affiliated one-day-event since 1982 and Teddy is now steadily establishing himself as an event horse. "We’re having a ball - and about time, too!" she said. For more see: kyzyltekes.co.uk