HAVING taken up riding at the age of three, Nicola Wilson is hoping to realise a lifetime ambition by competing at this year's Olympic Games. Chief Sports Writer Scott Wilson speaks to the Darlington-born equestrian star who is determined to overcome every obstacle in her way.

IT is the kind of story that dreams are made of. A three-and-a-half year old girl is loaned a pony and begins to learn how to ride. She discovers an immediate love of horses, signs up for her local pony club and spends the best part of her youth in stables and exercise barns.

Gradually, she becomes adept on horseback and dreams of carving out a career in equestrianism. But it couldn't really happen, could it?

In partnership with her first horse, Mr Bumble, she finishes in the top ten at Burleigh, one of the leading three-day-event competitions in Europe. Still, though, she accepts that her hobby is unlikely to progress to anything beyond that.

She heads off to university and gets a degree in sports studies and business management, but all the while, her dreams are filled with horses.

She advertises in tack shops across North Yorkshire, offering her services as rider, trainer or general dogsbody. After a couple of months, she is asked to work with a raw, unproven six-year-old, Opposition Buzz.

Initially, the pair struggle to get on. The horse is flighty and headstrong, the rider is young and inexperienced. Gradually, however, they gel.

They win team gold at the European Championships and World Equestrian Games. Still, though, one burning ambition remains.

London 2012. The biggest date in the equestrian calendar, the biggest date in Britain's sporting calendar for more than four decades.

It feels so close, and yet the competition is intense. From a field of a dozen-or-so viable contenders, only four riders will be chosen to select Great Britain. Will one of them be that same three-year-old who learned to ride in Darlington, spent hours with Hurworth Pony Club and now lives in Morton-on-Swale, near Northallerton? To answer that, you have to decide whether or not you believe in dreams come true.

"I was always mad keen on riding, and just loved being around the horses and working with them," said Nicola Wilson, as we chatted across her breakfast table to a backdrop of photographs charting a career that makes the 34-year-old one of the region's most successful sportsmen or women. "But although I was always passionate about having a career with horses, I was always realistic enough to know that I might not be good enough.

"It was always my dream to work with horses right the way through from grassroots to top level, and thankfully Opposition Buzz appeared to make that dream come true.

"We've already achieved so much together, things I never thought would be possible. And now, I'm going into the Olympic year with, touch wood, Opposition Buzz still looking and feeling really well.

"I just keep my fingers and toes crossed and wonder whether dreams can really happen. He's certainly been a horse of a lifetime, and he's already made so many of my dreams come true. But to go to London 2012 would really be the icing on the cake."

Before that, though, let's go back to the beginning of a partnership that could yet help propel Britain to a team eventing gold.

Having proved herself with her first horse, Mr Bumble, Wilson began to work with Opposition Buzz when the horse's owner, Rosemary Search, picked her out as an ideal tutor for her star possession.

"Rosemary bred him, owns him and still lives at Wetherby," said Wilson, who is a former student at both Teesside High and Darlington Sixth Form College. "At that stage, he was a novice, and I hadn't been finished from university long, so to get that kind of an opportunity was remarkable.

"It wasn't always plain sailing. Opposition Buzz has quite a unique way of jumping. He has quite a high head carriage and doesn't always use his back, so that's something we've really had to work around. He is probably quite different to most other horses to train, and it became quite obvious very early in his career that maybe he needed to train me more than I needed to train him."

In time, however, the union flourished. In 2009, Wilson secured her maiden selection for the British three-day event team at the European Championships, where she finished ninth individually and helped the team win gold.

A year later, she was selected for the World Equestrian Games in Kentucky, a competition that saw the British squad cement their position as the leading squad in the world with another gold medal.

Last year, a bronze medal at the European Championships in Luhmuhlen, Germany, provided the ideal platform from which to enter Olympic year.

At three major internationals, Wilson has proved her credentials as a key constituent of the British team, yet given the strength of eventing in this country and the need to forge a unit that will prosper over the Olympic cross-country course in Greenwich Park, her selection cannot be interpreted as a given.

"There are four selectors and I'm sure they've been pouring over various results and performances over the winter," said Wilson. "They'll be watching everything we do very closely from now on in, and we're expecting the final decision to be made at the end of May.

"Between now and then, we decide what's best for our own campaign and our horses. They're individuals and different things suit different horses.

"At the moment, we're planning to aim Opposition Buzz at Badminton. He'll probably have one run before Badminton, and then he'll have a short break after that. Hopefully, we'll have done well enough to be selected. If we haven't, we'll have given it our best shot."

While every prospective Olympian has to dash the dreams of some of their contemporaries in order to secure a place at the Games, few have to outrank the person who is 13th in line to throne.

Wilson might have to do exactly that, with 2006 world champion Zara Phillips having rediscovered her form following a difficult few years in which she struggled to come to terms with the retirement of her previous stable star, Toytown.

The likes of William Fox-Pitt, Mary King, Piggy French, Laura Collett and Polly Stockton will also hope to be selected, but Wilson's experience as the pathfinder, the person who rides the cross-country course first, could play in her favour.

"I've tended to be the pathfinder in the past," she said. "It's a massive honour but it's also a massive responsibility, but I've always liked going first.

"You're obviously trying to get the best result possible, but you're also testing out the course and hopefully coming back with some relevant information for the others. It's quite a specialised role."

None of that will matter, of course, if Opposition Buzz gets injured. So given that the Olympics are now little more than six months away, is there not a temptation to keep both herself and her horse out of the firing line?

"There's always a temptation to wrap them up in cotton wool, but I really don't think that would be fair," said Wilson. "You have to stick with what has worked in previous years and take your chance.

"The training routine we have in place seems to work, so it wouldn't achieve anything to change it. I just hope that luck's with us."

After three decades of development, it all comes down to staying fit for six more months. Do dreams come true? On July 28, in the heat of Olympic competition, we will find out.