AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) -Ferrari Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton said horses were his “next thing” after riding one for the first time ahead of the U.S. Grand Prix in Texas.
The seven-times world champion, who races with the Italian team’s famed black stallion logo on his car and is used to handling plenty of horsepower, revealed he was allergic to horses as a boy but had overcome it with treatment.
Speaking to reporters at Austin’s Circuit of the Americas, the 40-year-old Briton recalled an early bond with a horse in a field near his home when he was a boy.
“It would come over to me, and I’d spend time with it. But then I’d start walking home and notice my allergies start kicking off, and I’d struggle to breathe,” he said.
Hamilton said he went through a desensitization programme and took medication when he did a cover shoot with a horse this year for Time magazine to mark his arrival at Ferrari.
“Yesterday, I did the shoot with a horse for Plus 44 (his lifestyle brand) and I was like ‘Can I ride it?’ I got on, and it was just … It was an amazing experience,” explained the Briton, whose pet bulldog Roscoe died last month.
“Then the horse started moving, started to gallop, and … I didn’t know what to do. So I panicked a little bit, but it was beautiful.
“I’m really excited about this next kind of phase of my life, where I’m going to be around horses more and really get into riding. That’s my next thing.”
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Peter Rutherford)
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