Olympics auction has a lot riding on it

An Olympic hopeful is looking to raise more than £100,000 from a London art auction to buy a new horse to help her compete at the 2016 Rio Games.

Emily Baldwin, 32, is said to be on the verge of selection for the eventing team after a series of good results. But her horse, 17-year-old Drivetime, is in the “twilight of his career” and she needs a new mount to give her the best chance of competing in Brazil.

A contemporary art auction will be hosted tonight by BBC Bargain Hunt antiques and fine art expert James Braxton at Mary Ward House in Tavistock Place, Bloomsbury.

The auction was the idea of Kizzy Saville, whose daughter Ms Baldwin teaches, and 50 artists have now contributed works. They include Polish painter Ryszard Rybicki and several of the donors have had pieces exhibited as part of the Jerwood Drawing Prize and the Royal Academy’s London Original Print Art Fair. Ms Baldwin, who lives in Kent, is a former gold medallist at the Junior European Championships and has represented Great Britain in the Nations Cup team four times. She was the reserve rider for the British team in Beijing and was the only female to win the World Cup Event Series.

Ms Baldwin, whose father is a City worker, rode in the London dressage test event but was unable to make the Games squad because Drivetime was “too old for the hilly course”. She said: “In an ideal world, anything we raise over £100,000 would be fantastic. It’s for the horse I need to get to a top level and Rio is only three seasons away. It comes down to horsepower at the end of the day. The response has been overwhelming, I’m hugely grateful and humbled.”