Richard Dunwoody is unquestionably one of the most successful English National Hunt jockey’s of his age, being a three time Champion and leading the field throughout the 80’s and 90’s. During his 15 year racing career, Richard won the Grand National on two occasions, the Champion Hurdle and the Cheltenham Gold Cup but is perhaps best remembered for partnership with the legendary Desert Orchid on whom he won 7 races. His retirement from racing came as a result of injury at the age of 35 by which time he had won a staggering 1,699 races. He went on to become a sports columnist and pundit for the BBC Racing team.

Showing something of an adventurous nature, in 2008 Richard embarked on and completed an exhausting 680 mile walk to the South Pole, following the route planned by Shackleton in 1915. In so doing, he overcame adversity to once again achieve peak performance. A year later he took part in the 1000 mile in 1000 hours Barclay Challenge. An exercise that involved walking a mile every hour for 42 days but perhaps his ultimate challenge to date saw him appear on the popular BBC reality show, Strictly Come Dancing, an experience he describes as ‘far more daunting than riding around the Aintree Grand National fences!’

An accomplished after dinner speaker, in his presentations, Richard highlights the focus and determination needed to achieve his goals as well as confronting his fears. As a motivational speaker his topics of speech cover; learning from mistakes, overcoming the fear of failure, controlling the controllable, breaking the performance barrier, the making of a champion and building a high performance team.