A HAMPSHIRE teenager’s hopes of competing at the Olympics could be over after city bosses threw out plans to build a private equestrian yard in her garden.

Eighteen-year-old dressage rider Jessica Gale has been tipped to compete for Great Britain at the 2016 Rio games but faces 70-mile round trips to train after Winchester City Council rejected plans for a 1,625 sq m indoor arena in World’s End, near Hambledon.

Now the family says her Olympic hopes have suffered a “huge” setback.

The scheme was rejected after outcry from neighbours who said it would wreck their country views, boost the risk of flooding and help to urbanise the quiet hamlet.

Keith Brown, of Apless Lane, told Thursday's planning committee that the “extremely intrusive” block would be a “monstrosity” the size of an aircraft hangar, while city officials said building on the “often waterlogged” clay ground would risk further flooding in an area hit hard last winter.

Miss Gale, a former St Swithun’s School pupil who has represented Britain in numerous international competitions, practises in an open-air yard near the family cottage but takes her horses to Andover to practice dressage routines and says she needs her own indoor block to train all year round.

Jessica’s mother, Lynn Gale, said the family couldn’t afford to keep sending horses to Andover, adding that the decision would have a “huge, huge, huge” impact on her career prospects and could even end her Olympic hopes.

She said: “It’s such a shame that Jess’s dreams, all her dreams and all our work over the last four years, could come to an end because of how everybody reacted. She’s been riding all her life – I don’t know why they’ve reacted like that.”

“We need to have the facilities that she needs to be able to progress. She has to have a full-size arena.”