CrossCountry app co-founder Jose Diacono
"All in a day's work" interview with Britain's leading equestrian magazine Horse & Hound - as told to Martha Terry. Reproduced with permission.
Jose Diacono on a career in computing and the family-run course-mapping app that has transformed the cross country experience for riders, officials and spectators
I was horse-mad as a kid and grew up in Sinnington, North Yorkshire, famous for the Sinnington hunt. But we didn’t have land, so I’d go pony trekking once a year and have the odd riding lesson. I got my first horse after emigrating to Australia, aged 40. She was called Secret, a 14.3hh dark bay stock horse with one small sock. I had lessons with an English lady called Jill Severn who used to lease eventers and I tagged along and started eventing too.
I studied French and German at university, The theory then was that if you could do foreign languages you could do computer languages, which is how I moved into a career in computing.
In 2000, they were looking for people who could speak foreign languages to volunteer at the Olympics, held in our home city, Sydney. I worked as a liaison officer for the French team. I booked gallops, found restaurants, took boots to be repaired and worked as a crossing steward. It was amazing to see the Australian eventing team win gold. All the heroes were there. I met Pippa Funnell, saw Blyth Tait, Ian Stark, Isabell Werth... I patted the dressage champion Bonfire and De Sjiem the showjumping gold medallist. Sydney got me into volunteering, and I became president of the local riding club. I’d recommend it to anyone, you learn so much.
A combination of things made us develop CrossCountry App. I’ve worked in computer mapping for many years, using expensive systems for utility companies to track pipes and wires. In 2011, the iPhone was on the scene, and I was at an event with my daughter Helen who competes up to three-star. As we were walking the course, seeing riders with their trundle wheels, taking notes and photos, I thought, “surely we can combine all this?” We knew there was a gap but didn’t realise how much riders hated wheeling courses, and how quickly it would grow.
It’s very lucky we had all the people. Helen had just finished high school, on a gap year before studying design. My son James was already an amazing programmer. We started talking about it in May 2011 and released the first version that September. It was very simple then. You could record courses and it gave minute markers, but for personal use only. But people wanted to share and publish courses, so we developed a course library. Adelaide that November was one of the first courses we published.
We now have 18,000 public courses in our library. You can search for anything, from the London Olympics to a Pony Club tetrathlon course. In the US the tiny courses have lovely names, like Tadpole and Amoeba. It’s used in 101 countries with 150,000 lifetime downloads – you suddenly see that someone in Peru, India or Estonia has bought it on the App Store. Eventing is spreading around the world.
My main role is networking. I talk to everyone! When we were testing the app, I contacted Olympians Stuart Tinney and Shane Rose and asked if they would test it. They gave us brilliant feedback and so more people started testing it and word got out. I also do the support, talking to people in the US and Britain late at night. Having a real person on the end of the line makes a difference, because competitors need answers immediately. Usually the questions are tech-related – and the solution is often to reboot the phone!
It’s amazing how many people say the app has stopped them getting lost – they no longer drive three hours only to miss out a fence. I’ve got lost myself! Despite working in mapping, I’m not good spatially. Sydney has a lot of diverging tracks and trees. On one round, I went the wrong way at a fork, so lost a lot of time. I had also been known to jump the wrong fence. Our philosophy is that the app should be useful for everyone. At lower levels, you might not need minute markers, but it’s still important to visualise and know your course, especially if you’re nervous.
I’m proud of the family working so well together. We’ve added in my husband Phil, who has a computing background, to look after the security and performance. We have excellent representatives in Britain and the USA, but it’s still very much a family business. We have meetings where we exclude family chat, but round the dinner table, we’re still talking about the app! Eventing is our passion and our work.
We are driven by what the users want, they ask and we develop the software. The officials wanted to edit the courses, so we now have a CrossCountry Toolkit for organisers and course-designers, where they can design, edit and build their courses, which they used for the Paris Olympics. We’re expanding the Toolkit to incorporate fence data for analysis which can be used for education and safety purposes.
My favourite jump in our library is the Biffa Bins fence at Blenheim 2016. It was so clever how they incorporated the red bins of their sponsor. We highlight the most imaginative fences from all the levels each year. The top one from 2025 was a toothbrush in Washington State, USA, which was sponsored by a dentist.
It’s a lot of fun. H&H
