Enfield-born rider ready for Olympic dressage campaign

And if that sounds like a bold statement, then some key facts are worth digesting.

Enfield-born Dujardin only started riding at dressage grand prix level in January last year.

But she has arrived at her first Olympic Games as the grand prix special world record holder and first British rider to score 90 per cent for freestyle.

That latter achievement came at Hartpury in Gloucestershire just a few weeks ago when Dujardin gave her Olympic freestyle to music campaign a dress rehearsal on the brilliant ten-year-old Valegro.

It is a breathtaking routine crammed with patriotic British music and frequent interjections of Big Ben's chimes. If 26-year-old Dujardin performs like she can at Greenwich Park tomorrow week, then an expected capacity 23,000 crowd will erupt.

First on her Olympic agenda is the team competition, which she will contest alongside Carl Hester and Laura Bechtolsheimer. It starts tomorrow and continues on Friday, with medals decided when it resumes next Tuesday.

Dujardin trains with Hester at his yard in Gloucestershire, which has been a major factor behind her startling rise to prominence, and she revealed how their connection started when she bought a DVD in a saddle shop.

"I was in the shop and I saw this Carl Hester dressage demonstration DVD, so I bought it, watched it and thought 'wow, that is really cool,'" she told Press Association Sport.

"I had an Irish thoroughbred horse at the time, so we went out into the field together at home and I started teaching him to do piaffes and changes.

"I did showing with ponies when I first got involved in horses. My sister and I had Shetland ponies and we had a great time.

"I managed to win at the Horse of the Year Show four times, the Royal International and all the big county shows, but even in those days I was trained by a dressage trainer.

"And she always used to say to me 'why are you doing showing, why aren't you doing dressage?' But at that point it didn't really appeal to me to do dressage.

"Then at one of the showing competitions I did, there was also a dressage test involved in it.

"I did a really good test and won it, then a lady called Debbie Thomas took me on for work experience and let me ride her grand prix dressage horse.

"I tried a few things, and I found I actually quite liked it, even though I didn't know hardly anything about dressage."

As time progressed, Dujardin worked for international judge and rider Judy Harvey before linking up with Hester in 2007. And both moves have been key to her success.

"I was advised to go to Judy, who was just down the road from me and was an international judge and rider," she added.

"It took me two weeks to pluck up the courage to ask her, but I did and I was there for four years.

"Judy was brilliant for me. You learnt from her and you never made the same mistake twice.

"Then I met Carl at a world class performance day that I attended with my horse Fernandez. At one point, Carl had a sit on the horse, and it was just amazing to watch what he could do.

"But again I didn't have the courage to ask him for a lesson. It was my mum who asked if that would be possible, and then after a while he offered me a job."

And just how good that partnership is could soon be revealed on sport's biggest stage of all.