Soumillon International Pony Academy

The ten-time champion jockey in France sits down in a Deauville restaurant and starts speaking. For 45 minutes, Christophe Soumillon barely draws breath as he outlines in almost evangelical terms his plans to teach children to ride. His dream, of course, in establishing the Soumillon International Pony Academy, is to teach one or more of them to ride as well as he does. On Monday, the Société d'aménagement foncier et d'établissement rural (SAFER), a Normandy organisation charged with preserving green spaces, announced that Soumillon had beaten seven other applicants in...