Jean-Louis Gouraud, ambassador for the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games™ 2014 in Normandy :
Jean-Louis Gouraud is an editor and writer who describes himself as “a horse-lover".
He started his journalistic career as editor-in-chief of a specialist weekly news magazine, Jeune Afrique.
In the 1970s, he launched several magazines, book collections and radio stations in French-speaking Africa. Since 2010, he has been a collaborator for La Revue, a monthly French geopolitical magazine.
Passionate about travelling, he has visited numerous different countries, always with horses in mind. In 1990, he left Paris with two horses and headed to the USSR. The first “Westerner” authorised to ride into the Soviet Union, he arrived in Moscow 75 days later after a 3,333-kilometre journey!
Jean-Louis Gouraud also helped to create the Worldwide Organisation for the Barb Horse, which enabled this breed to be recognised in France.
This great lover of horses and equestrianism has created three collections devoted to Man’s most noble conquest: Caracole, Cheval chevaux and Arts équestres. As an editor, Jean-Louis Gouraud has produced around a hundred horse-related works in twenty years. In addition, he has penned or anthologised numerous other pieces, such as Serko (which was adapted for the cinema by Joël Farges), Riboy (which Bartabas used as inspiration for his film Chamane) and Chevaux (photos by Yann Arthus-Bertrand). His most recent book, Le Pérégrin émerveillé, won the Prix Renaudot (paperback) in 2013.
Jean-Louis Gouraud considers himself to be “a representative for four-legged beasts in a two-legged world; a defender of the horse in a world run by man; a friend of equines, a horse-lover”.
This storyteller is lending his talent to the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games 2014 in Normandy by penning 80 stories about Man and Horses to illustrate our ongoing project “Around the World in 80 Horses”.
