Amateur turning Pro – August update

My first pony was purchased by mistake as far as my parents were concerned. I had somehow persuaded them to let me have lessons at a local riding school where I was in my element. A couple of years later, at the age of 10, I was offered the opportunity to ride a pony at a local livery yard where my friend kept her own pony. “Gillie” was a four-year-old new forest bay mare with a large waistline which she took every opportunity to expand. Unbeknown to my parents at the time, one day Gillie was to become my own, my very own pony.

You see my parents made the crucial mistake of thinking that if I was able to ride Gillie once or twice a week at the livery yard, it would save them a considerable amount of money on riding lessons at the riding school. What they didn’t foresee was that a year or so down the line, when I had completely and utterly fallen head over heels for Gillie, her owner would put Gillie up for sale and had kindly (or not so kindly if you were my mother and father) offered us first refusal. This move marked the end of the Woolven’s horse-free household and after a lot of tears and tantrums when my parents refused to buy Gillie, they finally relented for fear of a traumatised child and handed over a few hundred pounds for my darling pony. This wasn’t a bad price to pay to make me the most euphoric child within a fifty mile radius of Bockmer End Livery Stables; a place where I was to spend a large percentage of what was to become the most wonderful childhood with ponies and like-minded pony-mad friends.

Fast forward about 10 years and I’ve just won the Individual Gold medal for Great Britain at the World University Games in South Korea, a result which boosted my confidence and kick-started my attempts to make a career from riding and eventing. Fast forward another three years to a fortnight ago which was one of the best weekends of my eventing career to date. My ride ‘LB The Phantom’ (aka Otto) jumped a double clear (with the exception of 2 time penalties in the show jumping) in the Intermediate Championships at the Gatcombe Festival of British Eventing. I think I was the proudest rider on the showground for Otto had given me the ride of my life, just when it mattered – at the most prestigious event we’d entered to date. As I walked back from show jumping with him (he was one of very few horses to leave all the fences up) I couldn’t stop thanking him for his effort; it had been mega and I was very, very grateful. He topped the day off with the most wonderful round across country and I was elated. We finished 27th out of nearly 80 horses.

Otto and I were in very strong company at Gatcombe and I appreciated that, but I couldn’t help but feel quietly dissatisfied to only finish 27th when it felt like we had put up such a strong performance. Otto can sometimes get a little tense in the white boards and this, combined with him adding some of his own movements to the test, left us in a less than desirable position after the dressage. We were never going to win and I knew a top 10 finish wasn’t particularly realistic either but I came away from Gatcombe with an even more frantic desire than usual to “do better next time.”

The following week and, although I knew I wanted to do better, as I set off to Aston Le Walls with another ride ‘Cooley Jelly’ for his Novice debut, I was still on a high from my ride around Gatcombe. Jelly is owned by the ‘Taught By Murphy Syndicate’ (will explain the story behind the name another time) and made light of his first Novice, finishing on his dressage score of 30.5 to finish 4th and gain his first three points. I was chuffed that one of his owners, Holly Moorhouse, had successfully managed to wangle the day off work and so was able to join me at Aston on what was a great day for the Jelly Tots (collective term for members of the Cooley Jelly fan club – very professional I know). Two days later ‘Smoking,’ a seven year-old Thoroughbred who I started riding in June, made his eventing debut at the unaffiliated event at Aston and he also finished on his dressage score to finish 5th.

It was a great weekend at Aston but it wasn’t a coincidence; I’d had a brilliant run at Gatcombe and received some really positive feedback from friends and owners who’d been there. I was feeling confident in myself and I know this makes a huge difference to how I perform at subsequent events. For example in May I won my first Intermediate at Tweseldown and I also won the next event I went to as I felt so positive and confident on the back of Tweseldown. I sometimes have an internal struggle to stay positive and confident in myself; if I have a few mediocre or less than satisfactory results, I begin to question my “system.” There are so many variables within the process of producing event horses, from your schooling methods to your feeding regime and your fitness work, and having only set up on my own in the last few months, I have suddenly become aware of how many options and choices I have in regards to how I run my yard and train my horses. So when I have some good results it is a well-received confidence boost and a great feeling of “I must be doing something right!” Phew!