It is the moving story of one glamour model’s struggle to be accepted in the equestrian Establishment, leaping all the barriers that the British class system could place in her way.

Now the tale of Katie Price, the model otherwise known as Jordan, is to be used to inspire inner-city children to take up riding in time for the 2012 Olympics.

Today, at the Burghley horse trials, Ms Price will be unveiled as the face of Hoof, a campaign run by the British Equestrian Federation.

It aims to challenge the widely held perception that London is a difficult place in which to pursue a career in three-day eventing. It hopes to deliver a generation of young city horse riders as a legacy of London 2012.

The appointment is a victory for Ms Price, a keen horsewoman who wrote recently in The Times of the discrimination that she suffered in the hospitality tent of an international polo event.

“However good a horsewoman I may be, I’m also a glamour model,” she wrote. “That embarrassed the organisers. I paid Chinawhite £6,000 for my table but my manager was told I was not the sort of person they wanted.”

After asserting her credentials as a competent rider who has begun to compete in dressage events on a mount named Jordan’s Glamour, Ms Price concluded: “Horses are a wonderful hobby. They should be for everyone little girls, glamour girls, working-class girls like me. No one should be excluded.”

If Cartier, the polo sponsors, were not exactly struck down by this blistering salvo, then Ms Price’s words certainly would have registered with another woman, also sometimes classed as an outsider, who is busy reinventing herself in British sport – Barbara Cassani, the American businesswoman who headed the London 2012 bid originally.

Ms Cassani established the team that would win the Olympics for London but there were raised eyebrows that an American should dare to front a British bid and she failed to impress the International Olympic Committee. She stepped down in May 2004 to be replaced by Lord Coe.

In 2007 she came back in from the cold, charged with ensuring an equestrian legacy for London after 2012.

The equine Olympics will not leave a permanent physical legacy: the arenas, the stabling and the cross-country fencing will all be dismantled and removed from Greenwich Park after the event. Instead, Ms Cassani hopes to boost the beleaguered riding schools of London.

She needed a role model, someone who could inspire young people, cut through the stereotypes, and a list of names, said to include those of Ms Price, Grant Bovey, the businessman, and Deborah Meaden, the entrepreneur, was put before key representatives of the city’s riding community. None of them was deemed to be suitable. Yesterday one member of that community voiced dissatisfaction with the appointment of Ms Price.

“We said there’s no way Jordan should be the face. This has nothing to do with her. We’ve heard that she’s rude and a foul person,” the official said. He asked not to be named, for fear that Ms Price would request to come and help out at the stable, adding: “I don’t want that woman here.”

At Mudchute Equestrian Centre in the Isle of Dogs, East London, a centre that had to sell its only horse box recently because it would not pass emissions tests, Maureen Frith was more supportive. “I think she’s a good choice,” she said. “She’s welcome any time down here.”

Michael Walsh, 15, a talented rider from Brixton, also approved. “In my school library there are books by her about horses,” he said. “I’ve read some of them.” Leading equestrians also backed Ms Price. David Broome, the former showjumping champion, said that he had met her at the Horse of the Year Show in 2005.

“She was perfectly pleasant,” he said. “It might also have helped if we had won a few more medals at the Beijing Olympics.”

Mary King, an icon of equestrianism, who learnt to ride by borrowing her local vicar’s horse, said: “She is dedicated to her riding. I understand that she even had her breasts reduced to help her with her riding. That shows real dedication. And she’s good with children.”

Ms Price could not be reached for comment. Yesterday she was busy unveiling her new equestrian clothing range, wearing a luminous pink polo shirt and pink velour hot pants.

Her white horse was wearing a matching pink blanket, and a vaguely doleful expression.

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