Martha Tomlinson
European Managing Director, Tipperary, Ireland. She looks at more than four hundred horses a year to find the ones we buy.
Martha is Dunedin's principal in Ireland, and the reason we can put a US rider on a horse they would not otherwise be offered. She finds them, she rides them, she appoints the vet and goes through the x-rays, and most of them come to her yard before they travel. She looks at more than four hundred horses a year to find the ones we buy.
She has never done anything else
Martha sold her first pony at thirteen and has never had another job. Starting three-year-olds, exercising horses at Olympic level, producing and selling, and since 2018 coaching at Level 1 and Level 2, beginners through to advanced. Her own account of it is many years of consistency, which undersells what it buys you. There is no second career behind her and no sideline beside it, and that is the only way anyone sees enough horses to know a good one on sight.
A horse a day
Martha sees at least one horse a day, more than four hundred in a year, and at a sales she will look at two hundred in a day. Dunedin buys a handful of them. The judgement is in the ones she says no to.
Where the horses come from
Martha runs LB Sports Horses in Tipperary. Much of what she sees never reaches the open market, because it is shown to her first by breeders and producers who have known her for years and would rather sell to someone who will tell them where the horse ends up. She travels across Europe to see them, and when something worth seeing sits in a corner of Europe she cannot reach that week, she sends someone she has worked with for years. Southern Spain, southern France, Sweden. The network is the part that cannot be bought in.
What happens before we commit
She rides it. Almost always Martha, sometimes Hayley when she is in Europe. Never a stranger sending clips.
She appoints the vet. The vetting happens in Ireland with the vet we appoint, never the seller's.
The x-rays get read twice. Martha goes through them with that vet, then they go to a radiologist in the United States for an independent second read, and Hayley goes through them as well. Nothing moves until all of them are satisfied.
Most come to her yard first. A week or two in Tipperary before they travel, so we know the horse before you do. Where that varies on your horse, we will tell you.
What happens when it lands
The horse comes in with Hayley and she rides it for a week or two before any buyer sits on it. Martha comes to the US regularly to work alongside Hayley on sales, and Katie is here on the ground as well, so the person who found your horse in Ireland, the 5★ rider producing it, and the person who will write your paperwork are all in the same ring more often than not.
Katie competed to Intermediate in the UK, so the commercial side of a Dunedin sale is run by someone who has ridden. What you are told about the horse is what goes in writing.
Martha met Katie and Hayley at Adelaide 5★ in 2018 and joined Dunedin after.
Three women. Three continents. One purpose.
Enquiries about sourcing a horse in Europe are answered personally by Katie, Hayley or Martha.