Nina Clarkin is a British

polo Polo is a ball game played on horseback, a traditional field sport and one of the world's oldest known team sports. The game is played by two opposing teams with the objective of scoring using a long-handled wooden mallet to hit a small hard ...

player.

Early life

Carina Vestey was born circa 1983. Her father, Mark Vestey, (b. 1943, d. 2016) was a former polo player.Serena Allott
Polo player Nina Clarkin: a life on horseback
''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was fo ...

'', 21 May 2009 Her mother, Rose Vestey, is the Master of the Cotswold Hunt. Her paternal uncle is

Samuel Vestey, 3rd Baron Vestey Samuel George Armstrong Vestey, 3rd Baron Vestey, (19 March 1941 – 4 February 2021) was a British peer, landowner, and businessman. He served as Master of the Horse to Queen Elizabeth II from 1999 to 2018. Lord Vestey was part of the fami ...

. She has a brother, Ben, and a sister, Tamara. She grew up at Foxcote Manor in Foxcote,

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of Gl ...

, in the

Cotswolds The Cotswolds (, ) is a region in central-southwest England, along a range of rolling hills that rise from the meadows of the upper Thames to an escarpment above the Severn Valley and Evesham Vale. The area is defined by the bedrock of Jur ...

.Nina Clarkin: UK's Top Woman Polo Player
''

Cotswold Life The Cotswolds (, ) is a region in central-southwest England, along a range of rolling hills that rise from the meadows of the upper Thames to an escarpment above the Severn Valley and Evesham Vale. The area is defined by the bedrock of Juras ...

'', January 31, 2010 She was educated at

The Cheltenham Ladies' College Cheltenham Ladies' College is an independent boarding and day school for girls aged 11 to 18 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England. Consistently ranked as one of the top all-girls' schools nationally, the school was established in 1853 to p ...

Cheltenham Cheltenham (), also known as Cheltenham Spa, is a spa town and borough on the edge of the Cotswolds in the county of Gloucestershire, England. Cheltenham became known as a health and holiday spa town resort, following the discovery of mineral s ...

. She graduated from the

University of the West of England The University of the West of England (also known as UWE Bristol) is a public research university, located in and around Bristol, England. The institution was know as the Bristol Polytechnic in 1970; it received university status in 1992 and ...

, where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. Clarkin is distantly related to actor

Tom Hiddleston Thomas William Hiddleston (born 9 February 1981) is an English actor. He gained international fame portraying Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), starting with ''Thor'' in 2011 and most recently in the Disney+ series ''Loki'' in 2021 ...

Career

She worked for

Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Polo

Nina Clarkin is a polo player with a polo handicap (outdoor) currently at 4 goals. She is credited in the introduction of Ladies Handicaps for the British

Hurlingham Polo Association The Hurlingham Polo Association (HPA) is the governing body for polo in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United Arab Emirates and many other countries. The Federation of International Polo produces the International Rules of Polo through a coop ...

where she currently has the highest Hurlingham Women's handicap of 10. In 2003, she won the Cowdray Park Gold Cup on the Hindon Polo Team, defeating the Labegorce Polo Team.Horace A. Laffaye, ''Polo in Britain: A History'', Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2012, p. 255

Personal life

She is married to John Paul Clarkin, a polo player from

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

References

Living people Alumni of the University of the West of England, Bristol English polo players Year of birth missing (living people) {{England-sport-bio-stub