‘I rode mules for eight hours a day when I was four’ – meet this rider who’s off to the Paris Olympics

How many Olympic eventing competitors start their riding careers trekking on mules? Well, there will be one at the Paris Games, when Moroccan rider Noor Slaoui makes her Olympic debut.

Noor, who is the only Arab athlete qualified to ride in the eventing at the Games and the first Moroccan rider to compete internationally in the sport, would spend up to eight hours a day on a mule when she was four years old. The 29-year-old says it was “love at first sight with the animals before the sport” for her.

“I grew up in Morocco, where my family still live, and I lived there until I was 18,” explains Noor. “My parents are big on hiking so we’d go with mules up into the mountains and in the desert. It allowed me to discover my country off the beaten track and I fell in love with animals and the countryside.”

Noor moved on to riding horses but didn’t have much knowledge of the competition world until she was in her late teens.

“I always wanted to be a professional rider, but I didn’t know anyone who was one. It’s not like in England where you can build a business. I had this idea, but I had no roadmap of how to get there,” she says.

Noor was accepted into Warwick University to study political science, but first went to Saumur in France for a gap year to become a riding instructor.

“It was my first real encounter with the professional horse world. Coming from Morocco, I thought we’d be patting ponies and having a lot of fun – it was fun, but more military than I expected, so it was a shock at the start, but I ended up loving it,” she says.

“Then I came to Warwick and I had a horse I brought back from France with me. I was driving and I saw all these events such as Offchurch Bury. I didn’t know much about eventing, but I thought it looked cool so I read the rulebook online. It was more complicated than I first thought! My record at BE90 was shocking – my horse didn’t like water – but I fell in love with the sport as soon as I started. I wanted to be a professional rider, but there was a big gap between what I wanted and where I was.”

Noor spent three years gaining experience in different areas of the horse world alongside university, including riding racehorses, and then based herself with Bill Levett for two years. She met her coach and business partner, France’s Deborah Fellous, five years ago and they started a yard together.

“We started with three horses and now have 17 boxes. We try to produce and sell horses, and we’ve just started breeding some too, and we try to get to championships – the Olympics will be my first senior championships,” says Noor.

Noor Slaoui: Olympic ambition

Noor says she always wanted to to go the Olympics, but that became more of a reality when she met Deborah and they found an owner, Moulay Hafid El Alamy, who was keen to invest in the project. They bought Cash In Hand as a rising six-year-old with the Games in mind.

She explains: “Because I was still learning, we were looking for a horse who wasn’t too flashy and who had a good heart and was willing to do the job – it would have been tempting to buy something super nice, but I wasn’t ready for that and he’s a great championship horse to learn on. We started at BE100 and moved up slowly together. The Olympics became more of a clear idea after the Blenheim eight- and nine-year-old class in 2022.

“He wouldn’t be the easiest in the sense he has his own balance – he’s not very uphill – but he wants to do the job, he’s clever, he looks after me and we know each other so well. I think partnership is everything and the fact we’ve done it together has been a big plus.”

Last year, Noor travelled all over Europe picking up points and qualifications to get to Paris – prioritising events with showjumping on a surface, which Cash prefers – but she thought her dream was over when Cash picked up an overreach on what should have been his final run at Ballindenisk. However, with the help of a great team, the horse came sound in time to travel to Montelibretti to secure his CCI4*-L qualification and points.

This year, the pair had a good run in the CCI4*-S at Ballindenisk and Noor then fell off at Avenches.

“It was just a bit of a misunderstanding at a corner – it was a long journey home, but it was one of those unlucky things and I’ve put it behind me now,” said Noor, who will have a couple more runs before Paris.

‘I’m trying to think about 10 years time’

Noor Slaoui does not expect to be competitive at this Games, but sees it as a stepping stone to the future.

“I started quite late in the sport and still have a lot to catch up on,” she says. “I’ll be doing to do my best and I want to do justice to my horse and my country and also to learn as much as I can without it feeling too pressured, to build on for the future. In any horse sport, if you manage yourself well and don’t have injuries you can do it for a long time, so I’m trying to think about 10 years time, trying to build my string and find owners.”

Noor also wants to spread the word about eventing and grow the sport in her region. Her own mainstream press coverage includes featuring in the Forbes Africa 30 under 30 list earlier this month.

“I’m big on inclusivity,” she says. “Eventing makes you a real horse person, you can’t leave any stone unturned, so if I can be an ambassador for it, that makes me proud and happy.

“It was a big piece of luck for me to be in the UK and discover the sport. In the Middle East and North Africa, there are no event riders at this level, so if I can talk about it more, inspire one or two people, I’d be proud. I want to be good, not just to participate – and I’d love to come back to the Olympics with a team, with more representation from the region and others. That’s what the sport needs.

“I think it’s our duty now as riders to try and advocate more and more for the sport in the media and on social media, to show what we’re made of, what we do. When people understand what we’re aiming to do I feel a lot of interest. In Morocco, there wasn’t anything about it, but now when people introduce me on radio or television, I see a growing interest and real movement forwards, which is great, but it needs to be channelled.”

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