Sunday 3 February 2013

Sport| Horse Riding

As i'm sure many of you, or none of you are wondering; why I have 'sport' in my description, the answer to this is that I competitively compete at BSJA (British showjumping association).
I'm sorry if this post doesn't interest you or you don't like it, but it's just something i'd like to have a blog as its such a massive part of my life.

Starters: I've owned horses my whole life, my mum rides, my grandma rides and so on. So I first sat on a horse when I was 18 months and my sister and I shared our first pony when i was 2, after this riding wasn't really something I did until I was about 5. For my 5th birthday i got some riding lessons and after that I got my first proper pony and joined The Pony Club (sounds weird but search it and you'll see it's not). Soon after I got a second pony so I had one called Bluebell and one called Cheeky Charlie.


Throughout the years I've met some amazing friends and one of my best friends; Emily Procter.
I started mounted games on Charlie and then I moved onto my sisters pony Minnie Mouse, i did mounted games on her for two years qualifying for national junior championships in 2008 (a very successful year). Meanwhile I got another pony called Banner (who we still own today), he is a life safer, anybody who has ever owned a horse or knows about horses will understand when I say that I can't describe how much I love this pony! I did showjumping and cross country on him for about two years and started mounted games on him too, he however was extremely lively and it involved me learning how to do everything at a much faster pace, at this point I had moved into the senior section at mounted games!

 In 2009 the senior A team (older members of mounted games) qualified for HOYS (Horse of the year show) somewhere that I had always dreamt of riding at, I very luckily got asked to go as part of the team being the '6th member' this meant i didn't ride but i got to have all the tracksuit and be part of all the 'backstage' stuff, this was an unforgettable memory! (Below is the HOYS team, me being the small midget on the left.)


I then carried on doing mounted games with banner for 2010 and 2011 qualifying for the senior national championships both years unluckily not qualifying for HOYS again!

In 2009 I got another pony called Whitney, she was a Jumping pony that I did lots of competing on, she was 12h2 and would jumped 1.05m with ease, which at the time was very large!

Late 2010 I got yet another pony called Destiny By now I had pursuaded my mum to let me join BJSA in the new year, so thats what we did, Destiny was a very lively pony who would bounce into every jump, I only had her for 3 months then I found her too much so sent her back to her owner.

In April 2011 I got a 14h1 pony called Tiptoes who I have only recently got rid of, she was an amazing pony who got me into bsja and got me jumping 1m and qualifying for blue chip championships and scope championships.

At the start of 2012 I got my current pony Hacker Jack off of my sister, he is one of the most talented 148s out there and he has taken me from jumping 1m to jumping 1m20 HOYS qualifiers! I may not have had luck on my side last year but hopefully this year we can give it another crack!

Currently I have taken on another pony called Blue Oasis (Teddy for short) who had some time off and now i'm bringing him back into work and he's going fantastically!


Photos in order:
Whitney Jumping at the riding club national championships 2009
Banner competing at a mounted games competition 2010
Destiny BSJA showjumping 2011
Tiptoes BSJA showjumping 2012
Hacker Jack BSJA showjumping 2012

Sorry about the length of this post it's basically my life story from 2004 onward!

Sophie xxx

3 comments:

  1. That sounds and looks so cool! I've never been horse riding before but would love to try it out one day :)

    Also, I've nominated you for the Liebster Award so check out my blog for more details!
    dreamdustx

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    Replies
    1. Thank you it is great fun :)) and aww thank you :D xx

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  2. By reading this post It have seemed that horse riding is a very interesting game. I have never been house riding but Now I will definitely try it.

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