By Victoria Goff 

It’s the end of a day’s competition in the International Arena. The final fence has been jumped, the prizegiving complete, the last lap of honour ridden to the rousing accompaniment of ‘Sussex by the Sea’. The crowds slowly dissipate, drifting back to their cars, or to check which tradestands remain open, or perhaps towards the nearest bar to raise a glass to a fun day out. Riders go back to the stabling complex or their horseboxes or prepare to travel home. 

It’s much quieter once all the horses and crowds have left for the night, but still the showground remains a hive of activity. Once the final class is complete, after a short break, several tractors laden with showjumps and wings are driven into the International Arena, accompanied by the 25-strong course building team, ready to start several hours of course building for the next day of competition. And the man in charge of it all is Kelvin Bywater, Hickstead’s senior course designer.

This year marks an incredible 35 years of involvement at the All England Jumping Course, but Kelvin’s connection to the showground dates back even further. Like so many fledgling equestrians, he remembers watching the Hickstead Derby on a little black and white TV, when Eddie Macken and Boomerang completed their amazing quadruple of victories. Now he’s in charge of ensuring the Derby remains as much of a challenge today as it was back then. 

Since I started, I have only ever missed one international show at Hickstead, and that was because I had a burst appendix

Kelvin was born into a horsey family, and there are photographs of him on a pony from the age of two. He started competing in British Showjumping classes on 138cm ponies, and for a while it looked like a career in the saddle beckoned. “I was riding for various people, then when I left school I went to work for Carmen Lanni at his equestrian centre in Goostrey in Cheshire. I was mostly jumping horses, but it was a competition venue running both indoor and outdoor shows, and soon I ended up building the courses – and that's how I fell into course design,” he says.

A couple of years later Kelvin returned home to set up a yard at his parents’ house, combining riding with course design for a while. But ultimately, it became too difficult to juggle both roles, and the course design took over. 

Asked who his early supporters were, Kelvin names Sheila Elstone – a course designer, British Showjumping Judge and Pony chef d’equipe – as well as fellow top course designers Bob Ellis and the late Jon Doney, who started out in course design before becoming Hickstead’s senior judge. It was the latter two that led to his involvement with Hickstead. “Both Jon and Bob were really influential to my career,” explains Kelvin. “I’ve known Bob pretty much all my life. He lived about 12 miles from my parents, and when I was growing up I used to go for jumping lessons with him. I started helping him out at various shows and it went from there. Then I met Jon on a training scheme at the Royal Show, we got chatting, and on the back of that he invited me to come to Hickstead in August 1989.”

Kelvin might have thought he was jinxed to begin with – on his first trip down to Sussex, the caravan he was towing began snaking on the motorway and he ended up stuck at the side of the road. A couple of days later he returned in an ancient horsebox that barely went over 50mph, and the journey from Cheshire to Hickstead took him more than seven hours. 

But despite these early setbacks, Kelvin made an impressive start to his career at the All England Jumping Course. He began course designing in Ring Three, moved to Ring Two, before moving to the International Arena about six or seven years later where he has remained ever since. “Since I started, I have only ever missed one international show at Hickstead, and that was because I had a burst appendix,” he says.

One of his early years stands out as one of his proudest moments. When the Royal International Horse Show first moved to Hickstead, Kelvin was tasked with designing the Working Hunter courses. He did a brilliant job, using his artistic flair and attention to detail to create some eye-catching and original fences.  He even employed the services of a hedge layer to create woven hazel pens and an owl’s hole.  “Douglas Bunn used to drive around in his car and would make various comments about how things should be done. Luckily, the Working Hunter classes were very well received and on the final day of the show in 1993, I was awarded the Dorian Williams Trophy [for the biggest contribution to the show], so Douglas must have approved. I was quite young then, so it was really touching to win.” 

I would probably be the most nervous person at the start of any big class, watching the first few horses go

Another standout moment came in 2006, when Kelvin designed the Nations Cup course for the first time. “That was really special for me, and it was a British win, when we hadn't had one for a while, so that made it even better,” he adds.

It is these major classes – the King George V Gold Cup, the Queen Elizabeth II Cup and the Nations Cup – that give Kelvin his proudest, yet most nerve-wracking moments. “I would probably be the most nervous person at the start of any big class, watching the first few horses go,” he admits. “If you're invested in anything, you passionately want it to go right. Ultimately, what you're looking for is good sport.”

These big competitions are the starting point each year for his plans for Hickstead. “I like to have an idea of what I'm going to do for the main classes well in advance of the shows. I do a first draft, then come back and take another look at it a couple of weeks later and perhaps do a second draft. Once those big classes are done, the other classes work backwards from those.”

Hickstead’s course designs, like all best laid plans, sometimes have to change. “It also depends on what the weather does, and the quality of the field. So, I’ll continue to make minor adjustments, until I get to that point where the course is ready to build,” he explains. 

The build itself can take up to five hours each evening. The first task is to lay out the numbers for the different courses, bearing in mind there might be four different courses being built for the following day. Then the top rails are laid out, followed by ‘measuring in’, when Kelvin and his team go round the course, measuring the distances and positioning the fences, and adding the wings. Two other teams are tasked with filling in the lower poles and the fillers, and making sure the fences are level and straight, because of the cambers of the arena. Once that's done, another team comes round and washes all the fences to make sure they’re pristine, while another team is busy putting in the holes for the decorative Christmas trees. 

I’ve been the caretaker of the Derby for 20 or so years now, and it is to the best of my ability exactly the same location for all the fences, year upon year

It can be quite a late finish, with the team working well into the evening. “Normally we get everything finished the night before, and then in the morning it's just a case of making sure everything is straight and tidy, and we’re ready to start competition,” adds Kelvin, who will spend show weeks sleeping in his caravan, just metres from the International Arena. 

Even classes like the Al Shira’aa Derby and the British Speed Derby, where the course stays the same every year, still involve a painstaking amount of work to lay out correctly. “I’ve been the caretaker of the Derby for 20 or so years now, and it is to the best of my ability exactly the same location for all the fences, year upon year,” says Kelvin, who uses various arena co-ordinates to pinpoint the exact location of each jump. “It's a long build because the fences are all the original equipment, and it’s quite time consuming. We probably spend 40 minutes each year just getting the height of the rail going into the Devil’s Dyke absolutely right.”

It’s quite a contrast to indoor shows like London or HOYS, where even larger course building teams of up to 50 people come into the arena and build the course as quickly as possible. “There you might have 15 minutes from the end of the harrow to the judges walking the course, if you're lucky,” says Kelvin. 

For indoor shows, course designs don’t have to factor in things like weather conditions or arena gradients – something that can make Hickstead more of a challenge. There is also that need to keep up with the modern sport whilst retaining its traditional charm. “Hickstead has a unique feel to it, the sheer size and scale of it, the ebbs and flows of the slopes make it quite challenging for competitors,” says Kelvin. “I think the surface, since it was completely renovated back in 2010, is arguably the best in the world. If you see photographs from Hickstead, you can never mistake it for anywhere else in the world. Part of the role is to ensure the character and essence of the showground continues, but at the same time, we keep modernizing too. It's keeping that balance.”

Since his former colleague Bob Ellis retired in 2020, Kelvin has worked alongside Ben Townley, the son-in-law of Hickstead Director Edward Bunn, to design all the courses in the International Arena. “I really enjoy working with Ben, and I think we make a good team at Hickstead,” he adds. 

There are some very successful course designers who have never ridden a horse, but for me, it helps tremendously to have that understanding

For anyone who’d like to follow in his footsteps as a course designer, Kelvin recommends going to as many shows as possible, watching different course designers work, and offering to help as part of the course building team. You don’t necessarily need to have competed at a decent level yourself, but it helps. “There are some very successful course designers who have never ridden a horse, but for me, it helps tremendously to have that understanding.”

What else do you need? “Nerves of steel. It is the most pressurised thing I do – there is nothing like the pressure of being a senior designer on a big class. You need some artistic ability, and you need to be able to watch and understand how horses work. Carmen Lanni used to say to me, once you’ve built a course, stand in the ring and watch the horses jump. That way you’ll learn more than anything. The aim should be to challenge the rider to negotiate the course, rather than to over challenge the horse. It is not a perfect science, and often it comes down to a gut feeling, which is something you learn over the years.”

Kelvin has spent his career travelling the world, designing courses at numerous shows around the globe. For the past quarter of a century, he has combined this role with running multiple championships in the UK, including the National Dressage Championships, the Winter Dressage Championships, the Blue Chip Winter Showjumping Finals and the Trailblazers Championships. In December he took on a significant new challenge of running Addington Equestrian Centre in Buckinghamshire. He celebrated his 60th birthday in April, and he’s hoping the new role will allow him to spend less time on the road and more time at home. 

With all those different roles, does he ever get a day off? Not often, he admits. “I don't have a job, I only have a lifestyle,” says the man with all the plans, and the creator and curator of so many unforgettable moments of sporting brilliance at Hickstead.