Ronnie Massarella: Businessman who led British show jumpers to glory while building one of Europe’s largest ice cream manufacturers

Showjumper Geoff Billington called Massarella 'the best chef d’equipe any country ever had'

Massarella: ‘What a man,’ said Geoff Billington. ‘He was the best chef d’equipe any country ever had’

As the Yorkshire-born son of an Italian immigrant family, 10-year-old Ronnie Massarella used to sell the family’s home-made ice cream from a wooden wheelbarrow to coal miners at the pithead anxious to clear their throats. He went on to turn the family firm into one of Europe’s biggest ice cream producers, as part of his UK-wide Massarella Catering Group.

That is a successful life story in itself. But Massarella became best-known in the UK and far beyond as the leader of Britain’s show jumping teams during the glory years of such household names as Harvey Smith, David Broome, Nick Skelton and John Whitaker. For 32 years he was the British team’s chef d’equipe, or manager, taking them to seven Olympic Games.

From his formal retirement after the Sydney Olympics in 2000, and until his death, he was Honorary Vice-President of British Showjumping, the governing body of the sport in this country. He led Britain to team silver at the 1980 Alternate Olympics in Rotterdam: many western nations had boycotted the official Olympics in Moscow, and while most British teams resisted Margaret Thatcher’s demands to join them, the equestrian team, along with their hockey and sailing counterparts, did not.

There was official eventing team silver at the Los Angeles Olympics four years later. Massarella also led Britain to team gold at the 1978 World Championships in Aachen and the 1985 European Championships at Burghley.

Announcing Massarella’s death, British Show Jumping said, “Ronnie is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest ambassadors this sport has ever known.” He was awarded an OBE in 1982 for his services to the sport and a Lifetime Award by British Show jumping in 2001.

The Massarella family also owned the famous showjumper Mister Softee, named after the US ice cream brand to which the family firm had the UK rights at the time. Ronnie’s good friend David Broome rode the chestnut gelding to numerous successes, including individual bronze at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico.

Another great horse in Massarella’s team was the legendary world champion grey Milton, ridden by his fellow Yorkshireman John Whitaker during the 1980s and early ’90s. “Milton gave me my greatest years in the sport and he and John [Whitaker] were the perfect ambassadors for British show jumping,” Massarella told Horse & Hound magazine last year. “Milton had something no other horse had.”

Ronaldo Massarella was born in Doncaster in 1923. His grandfather, Giovanni Massarella, a farm labourer, had left the family’s hilltop village of Settefrati in the Lazio region east of Rome in the middle of the 19th century to seek a better life. Like most Italians of the time he had set out for the US but, through family connections in Sheffield, found himself settling in South Yorkshire.

Giovanni started out playing a barrel organ and selling hot chestnuts before realising the potential of ice cream for miners. His son Carmine, Ronnie’s father, eventually took over the business and as a 10-year-old, before or after school, Ronnie would push a wheelbarrow full of ice cream to the pitheads. He also helped his father build and paint gaily coloured horse-drawn ice cream carts – his first interest in horses.

Grainy photos of those carts still adorn Massarella’s home, the 16th century Thurcroft Hall in Brookhouse, near Sheffield, also the headquarters of Massarella Catering Group, of which Ronnie was chairman until his death. From those early days of selling ice cream from wheelbarrows or horse-drawn carts, Massarella Catering Group is now a £40m concern with more than 100 outlets and 2,000 employees.

At one point the company was the biggest producer of ice cream in Europe, churning out 5,000 gallons a day. In the 1950s, J Lyons & Co made the family an offer they could not refuse and took over Massarella and its ice cream production. (A certain Margaret Roberts, later Baroness Thatcher, worked for Lyons at the time, seeking ways to preserve the ice cream.)

In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Massarella gradually bought back a part of the business from Lyons and branched out from ice cream into catering services in shopping centres, department stores, garden centres, coffee shops and leisure outlets. Last year he celebrated 150 years of the family business.

He was also chef d’equipe of the British showjumping team from 1969-2000. One of his team during the 1970s was gifted showjumper Aileen Ross, second wife of retail magnate Sir Hugh Fraser, a connection that won Massarella a lucrative deal to have outlets in more than 50 branches of House of Fraser.

Massarella died at his home, Thurcroft Hall, where he had been cared for during his recent illness by nurses from the Rotherham Hospice. “What a man,” said showjumper Geoff Billington. “He was the best chef d’equipe any country ever had.”

Ronaldo Massarella, show jumping team manager and catering executive: born Doncaster, South Yorkshire 23 July 1923; OBE 1982 married Edna (died 2012; four sons); died Brookhouse, South Yorkshire 18 October 2015.