Becoming a para-dressage rider
Learning to ride
I was born with a genetic, degenerative disease known as Charcot Marie tooth, a genetic disorder of the peripheral nervous system characterized by progressive loss of muscle tissue and touch sensation across various parts of the body.
However my parents never saw me as a disabled child, so when I started begging my parents to let me start riding, they agreed.
I started riding at 9 years old, but I was not a natural!! It took me almost three months to learn the rising trot and another three before my instructor would let me try to canter, with minimal success. Evenually, I started to find my balance and moved on to a more advanced pony.
Endurance Riding
After three years of lessons, I wanted to start riding more often and more competitively. I started taking an extra lesson per week at a different yard.
This is where my endurance riding adventure began.
My new yard, Silver Lake Stables was a trail ride and endurance yard and I loved riding outrides all the time, even though I fell off on every other ride. I started half baiting a pony named Mystery Boy and training with the endurance riders. I even completed a few 30km rides on Mystery Boy.
I later moved on to a bigger horse, a SA Boerperd named Candero, and started riding longer distances. (When we later moved on to our own small holding, I bought Candero and he lived out his golden years before he passed at 24 years old)
I went on to ride many kilometers on many fantastic horses and eventually completed the Faurie Smith 200km championships on my Anglo-Arab mare, Al Yatun Ghisana,.in 2007.
Endurace riding gave me confidence, strength and a sense of adventure. Through Endurance riding I met the most amazing friends and mentors. I still continue to ride Endurance (only now less competitively and on easier horses), and have completed over 3000 competitive kilometers.
Finding dressage
While working on an endurance stud farm, I met two dressage riders and had the opportunity to ride a dressage schooled horse. I started becoming curious about dressage and took a few lessons at a nearby dressage yard.
Then in 2009, I made the biggest mistake of my life. I went for a surgery in which they needed to break both my femurs, the right one just below the hip and the left just above the knee. My left femur grew on skew and resulted in a second sergury and damage to the cartilage in my knee join. But worse than that, my right femur refuse to unite. We tried a bone graph and several other surgeries, but nothing helped. It was very unpleasant to move at all and as a result I spent most of the time in a wheelchair or lying down. By the time I went for the surgery, we had already moved onto our own small holding and acquired several horses. Three of my closest friends rode the horses for me, but after a while, they could no longer keep it up and most of the horses were left to stand in the field. I started to give up hope of ever walking again and became depressed. Thankfully my very dedicated physio therapist had not given up hope. She contacted a doctor she had worked with and arranged a second opinion. I was then referred to a bone specialist. He convinced me to try one more surgery. By this time I had been living with a broken leg for a year and 2 months. Dr Franzen removed the pin in my leg, attached a more stable plate, and did another bone graph. Within 6 weeks I was walking unaided!
I immediately started feeling happier and started riding again as soon as I dared. Unfortunately, long periods of inactivity speed up the degeneration of my disorder. I tried to ride like I had before, but with decreased strength and loss of confidence, I simply could not cope with some of the horses. One of these horses was an Anglo Arab gelding I had bred for endurance. Tyson had a bad habit of bucking when excited and when other horses came up behind him. So it was after two bad falls that I decided to use Tyson for dressage instead. It was not easy, but after six months of lessons, we started to understand each other a little better.
I started competing at training shows. It was then that people started to suggest Para-dressage. I contacted the chairperson and went to watch a para-dressage show.
My Para-dressage career so far
After watching the para-riders compete, I realized I would have to work much harder. I found a freelance instructor, Anneke Roodt who was willing to come out to my yard to teach me as well as help school my horse. My scores at my next training show (Prelim) improved by 10%! So soon, maybe too soon, I entered my first para-show. Tyson was a good boy as usual, but lacked impulsion and was slow off my leg. We placed second out of two with not great scores.
I decided to concentrate on able bodied shows until I could move him up the grades. Tyson did get up to Graded Novice, but he will always be a lazy horse who is long in the body and heavy on the forehand, not great for a para-rider. I was then that my instructor suggested I start schooling Claire du Lune for dressage. Claire proved to be a much less tiring horse for me to ride and after only 2 months of schooling we placed 1st in both walk/trot training classes at an able bodied show with scores of 68 and 76%!
Only a few weeks after Claire’s first show, I was contacted by Dressage SA and asked if I would consider competing at CDPEI World Cup Festival, a FEI 3 star copetition. With one horse who I couldn’t get to move forward and another that had only recently started dressage, I quickly declined. Dressage SA was already finding horses to borrow for out of town riders and offered to find one for me as well. This was an offer I could not refuse!
So two days before the show (and after seeing some other horses) I met South African Lipizzaner’s Siglavy Cimbola (prix st. George horse). I liked Cimbola immediately! With such a lovely temperament, I was not at all concerned that he was a stallion. Siglavy Cimbola and I placed second in the team test on day one, first in the individual test on day two and to my surprise, with only an afternoon to prepare a kur, first in the freestyle (musical kur) with a score of 68.66%! And we made the short list for WEG (World Equestrian Games)!
What’s next?
Having done so well on a borrowed horse, it started to occur to me that WEG (World Equestrian Games) and para-olympics may actually be within my grasp. So this is my mission!
I will continue to take lessons on and compete Claire and Tyson, but the most practical way to compete overseas is to qualify and compete on horses based overseas. I have a lot to learn, but hopefully, with a lot of luck and sponsorship, I will achieve my goal.
Learning to ride
I was born with a genetic, degenerative disease known as Charcot Marie tooth, a genetic disorder of the peripheral nervous system characterized by progressive loss of muscle tissue and touch sensation across various parts of the body.
However my parents never saw me as a disabled child, so when I started begging my parents to let me start riding, they agreed.
I started riding at 9 years old, but I was not a natural!! It took me almost three months to learn the rising trot and another three before my instructor would let me try to canter, with minimal success. Evenually, I started to find my balance and moved on to a more advanced pony.
Endurance Riding
After three years of lessons, I wanted to start riding more often and more competitively. I started taking an extra lesson per week at a different yard.
This is where my endurance riding adventure began.
My new yard, Silver Lake Stables was a trail ride and endurance yard and I loved riding outrides all the time, even though I fell off on every other ride. I started half baiting a pony named Mystery Boy and training with the endurance riders. I even completed a few 30km rides on Mystery Boy.
I later moved on to a bigger horse, a SA Boerperd named Candero, and started riding longer distances. (When we later moved on to our own small holding, I bought Candero and he lived out his golden years before he passed at 24 years old)
I went on to ride many kilometers on many fantastic horses and eventually completed the Faurie Smith 200km championships on my Anglo-Arab mare, Al Yatun Ghisana,.in 2007.
Endurace riding gave me confidence, strength and a sense of adventure. Through Endurance riding I met the most amazing friends and mentors. I still continue to ride Endurance (only now less competitively and on easier horses), and have completed over 3000 competitive kilometers.
Finding dressage
While working on an endurance stud farm, I met two dressage riders and had the opportunity to ride a dressage schooled horse. I started becoming curious about dressage and took a few lessons at a nearby dressage yard.
Then in 2009, I made the biggest mistake of my life. I went for a surgery in which they needed to break both my femurs, the right one just below the hip and the left just above the knee. My left femur grew on skew and resulted in a second sergury and damage to the cartilage in my knee join. But worse than that, my right femur refuse to unite. We tried a bone graph and several other surgeries, but nothing helped. It was very unpleasant to move at all and as a result I spent most of the time in a wheelchair or lying down. By the time I went for the surgery, we had already moved onto our own small holding and acquired several horses. Three of my closest friends rode the horses for me, but after a while, they could no longer keep it up and most of the horses were left to stand in the field. I started to give up hope of ever walking again and became depressed. Thankfully my very dedicated physio therapist had not given up hope. She contacted a doctor she had worked with and arranged a second opinion. I was then referred to a bone specialist. He convinced me to try one more surgery. By this time I had been living with a broken leg for a year and 2 months. Dr Franzen removed the pin in my leg, attached a more stable plate, and did another bone graph. Within 6 weeks I was walking unaided!
I immediately started feeling happier and started riding again as soon as I dared. Unfortunately, long periods of inactivity speed up the degeneration of my disorder. I tried to ride like I had before, but with decreased strength and loss of confidence, I simply could not cope with some of the horses. One of these horses was an Anglo Arab gelding I had bred for endurance. Tyson had a bad habit of bucking when excited and when other horses came up behind him. So it was after two bad falls that I decided to use Tyson for dressage instead. It was not easy, but after six months of lessons, we started to understand each other a little better.
I started competing at training shows. It was then that people started to suggest Para-dressage. I contacted the chairperson and went to watch a para-dressage show.
My Para-dressage career so far
After watching the para-riders compete, I realized I would have to work much harder. I found a freelance instructor, Anneke Roodt who was willing to come out to my yard to teach me as well as help school my horse. My scores at my next training show (Prelim) improved by 10%! So soon, maybe too soon, I entered my first para-show. Tyson was a good boy as usual, but lacked impulsion and was slow off my leg. We placed second out of two with not great scores.
I decided to concentrate on able bodied shows until I could move him up the grades. Tyson did get up to Graded Novice, but he will always be a lazy horse who is long in the body and heavy on the forehand, not great for a para-rider. I was then that my instructor suggested I start schooling Claire du Lune for dressage. Claire proved to be a much less tiring horse for me to ride and after only 2 months of schooling we placed 1st in both walk/trot training classes at an able bodied show with scores of 68 and 76%!
Only a few weeks after Claire’s first show, I was contacted by Dressage SA and asked if I would consider competing at CDPEI World Cup Festival, a FEI 3 star copetition. With one horse who I couldn’t get to move forward and another that had only recently started dressage, I quickly declined. Dressage SA was already finding horses to borrow for out of town riders and offered to find one for me as well. This was an offer I could not refuse!
So two days before the show (and after seeing some other horses) I met South African Lipizzaner’s Siglavy Cimbola (prix st. George horse). I liked Cimbola immediately! With such a lovely temperament, I was not at all concerned that he was a stallion. Siglavy Cimbola and I placed second in the team test on day one, first in the individual test on day two and to my surprise, with only an afternoon to prepare a kur, first in the freestyle (musical kur) with a score of 68.66%! And we made the short list for WEG (World Equestrian Games)!
What’s next?
Having done so well on a borrowed horse, it started to occur to me that WEG (World Equestrian Games) and para-olympics may actually be within my grasp. So this is my mission!
I will continue to take lessons on and compete Claire and Tyson, but the most practical way to compete overseas is to qualify and compete on horses based overseas. I have a lot to learn, but hopefully, with a lot of luck and sponsorship, I will achieve my goal.