Stories From The Saddle: The trials and triumphs of Australia's greatest equestrian riders

Introduction

I FIRST ARRIVED at the idea of asking our leading Australian competitive riders to share their most memorable moments with me several years ago now. As with most ideas, I sent it to the back of my mind while I got on with full-time work and caring for and competing on my own horses. However, the idea kept returning, as our equestrian community is filled with a whole range of intriguing and wonderful characters and personalities, people who have suffered through adversity and disappointment and who have resolutely made their way back to the top, time and time again.

Owning and competing horses is a sport fuelled with natural highs and lows, but what was it about our top riders that gave them their determination and drive to succeed? How did they view their own particular achievements and disappointments? Were there times when they, like me, thought that it was all too hard? Did they ever want to take up an easier sport such as triathlon or hang-gliding? Did they ever spit the dummy or do something incredibly dumb? Were they, in other words, just regular people? I thought that if I wanted to know such things then maybe other riders and horse owners would too. Having competed horses in the lower levels of dressage, showjumping and eventing for most of my adult life, I was naturally curious about riders in these Olympic disciplines.

So I set myself the task of tracking down and interviewing the riders featured in this collection. A task that was, as it turned out, a lot harder than I first thought! In the process of interviewing and listening I discovered a kind of by-product of my original aim, and that was that an overview of sorts of our fascinating equestrian history was being formed.

Up until now there has been very little in the way of recording Australia’s contemporary equestrian history in the mainstream book-publishing media. Longstanding and national magazines such as Hoof and Horns and later The Horse Magazine have done much to record and promote the competitive and training side of the Olympic horse sports, and of course the burgeoning growth of online sites have made similar information much more accessible. However, there has not been much available, as far as recordings go, of the thoughts and behind-the-scenes stories of our riders who have achieved so much (usually on the smell of an oily rag) and helped push the disciplines of eventing, showjumping and dressage so far. I hope this is only the start of it; there are so many more wonderful stories of peoples’ and horses’ lives yet to be recorded.

There are so many variables in an equestrian life. Like most sports there are the highs and the lows, the wins and the losses, the achievements and the disappointments. But what sets equestrian sports apart is the fact that a rider not only has his own motivation, injuries and preparation to contend with but those of his horse as well. There are two minds in play at any given time, two vastly different bodies to keep fit and injury free, two sets of free will to synchronise! There is no other competitive sport so challenging to mind, body and spirit … and no other sport as completely fulfilling. In sharing their most memorable joys, temper tantrums and challenges, these elite riders reveal what we have always known but kept to ourselves: horses are more than just competition vehicles. They are extensions of our souls and our desires, and of our very selves. And just like you and me, every single rider has been shaped by the horses he or she has owned or ridden. In this way, equestrian sports are distinct from any other competitive sport.

It has been an honour and a privilege to share the memories of some of Australia’s best and best-known riders. Thank you all.

Samantha Miles

29 December 2010

1

Rozzie Ryan

Rozzie Ryan is one of Australia’s best-known and most accomplished dressage riders. She was a member of the first dressage team to compete internationally in the World Equestrian Games in 1990 and was the reserve rider for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Rozzie has twice won the title of Australian Grand Prix Champion. Along with her husband Heath she ran the now legendary and successful Lochinvar Equestrian Centre for 25 years. Currently she and Heath live in Heatherbrae, NSW, where they operate their new centre, Ryans at Newcastle.

I GREW UP in Colchester, England. My mother had always wanted to ride but she never had the opportunity because she grew up on the Mediterranean. She and Dad had some friends who lived on Mersey, which is a little island off the coast of Essex. There was a gorgeous riding school there, a classic English riding school called Miss Catchpole’s School of Riding. My mother used to ride there when she went and visited her friends. My older brother also started riding there and apparently, when I was about three, I created havoc until I was allowed to ride as well. At first I rode along the beach. We used to be taken on the lead rein and trot between the breakwaters. If you were lucky you got to ride Blackie, who was very quiet, which meant you could even canter between the breakwaters. They were pretty close together so you didn’t canter for very long. It was a great way to learn as it was gentle and very much geared towards making you feel confident and safe. I had a ball and loved it.

My parents then bought me a pony, Stella, when I was about six. My mother and I really knew nothing about horses. Luckily Stella was the ideal first pony, very quiet, because we did dreadful things to her and made all sorts of mistakes, out of pure ignorance.

Stella really was the perfect first pony and she never bucked or reared. However, she was a bit of a roller, and would roll at any given opportunity on soft ground. Soon after I got Stella I began attending English Pony Club where you did a bit of everything. You jumped, you hunted, you did bending races, you tried showing and eventing. At that time eventing was really my passion.

The good thing about the English is that they are so pedantic about stable management. In winter when it was not nice enough weather to ride outdoors, and as there were not many indoor schools, we would be drilled in stable management instead. It became second nature to always look after the pony first, before getting yourself a drink or something to eat. Pony club was also very much geared towards good sportsmanship, in a very English kind of way. If you behaved badly or acted like a bad loser you were sent home, never to come again. It was a very good upbringing. I had a lot fun at pony club and made a lot of friends.

My memories of my first ever dressage test are terrible. I must have been about seven because for my seventh birthday I had been given the most beautiful pair of jodphurs I had ever seen. They were hand stitched and I was terribly proud of them. I wore them for my first dressage competition. It had been raining quite a lot and the organisers had harrowed the warm-up area. I was on Stella, the roller pony. I had warmed up and was ready to go in the arena but stopped for some reason, possibly to get the final touch up, and she got down and rolled. When she got up one side of her was absolutely covered in mud. One side of me was also absolutely covered in mud — all over my new jodphurs! I was furious. I rode my dressage test with one side of Stella and me a complete sheet of mud. However, this turned out to a good thing, in hindsight, as every test I did from then on could only ever get better. I don’t think the jodphurs ever recovered though.

Riding was all I ever wanted to do when I grew up. However, my family held the view that you had to contribute to society in some useful way so I decided to study nursing, thinking at least I would have those skills forever. At that time, in the late 70s, there was not a lot of opportunity to ride full time, unless your family owned a massive horse property. Luckily, just as I finished my nursing, I was offered a job in a beautiful stable in Sussex with Jane Houghton-Brown, who was a very good showjumper. However, as a newly qualified nurse I was supposed to take up a six-month staff nursing post. Fortunately the Head of Nursing was very decent about it and let me go to take up the stable position. I think she was a bit of a rider and realised that you don’t get those sorts of opportunities everyday.

I met my husband Heath while I was working for Jane. Heath had been in Germany training in dressage and was on his way back to Australia via Jane’s place and some showjumping schooling. While Heath was training with Jane he actually accompanied me to Braham Three-Day Event to groom … the first and last time he ever acted as a groom for me! I don’t think Heath is what you might call a ‘natural’ groom. He is not really that interested in it. I think he just wanted a break from the very serious, very disciplined German style dressage training he had been doing and to see a proper English three-day event.

I then decided to come to Australia on a six-month holiday, after which Heath and I went back to England to get married. We returned to Australia and started working for Heath’s parents, Rod and Sue, who ran a sheep farm in Black Hill, just outside Newcastle in NSW. Then in 1983 Bob and Judy Mitchell built the Lochinvar Equestrian Centre in Newcastle and asked us to run it. That is when it all really started. We were only ever going to be there for five years. We ended up staying for 25.

Once we had Lochinvar more or less up and running I fairly quickly made the transition to dressage, as I was given the ride on a horse called Stirling Wilton. Wilton had originally been an eventer but was somewhat reluctant about it so he became my dressage horse. He was the first horse I trained to Grand Prix level.

In 1990 Australia was able to send a dressage team to the first World Equestrian Games which were being held in Stockholm. This was the first time Australia had sent a dressage team to compete internationally so it was a very big deal. I was absolutely thrilled when I was named on the team as, at 34, I was still relatively new to the level of Grand Prix. I was named along with Peter Weston on Tutenkhamen, Anne Honner on Sydney Symphony, Glennis Barrey on Livius 28 and Gill Rickard on Peaches and Cream, with Clemens Dierks as the trainer.

The trip was a fantastic experience. Our first destination was Holland, where the team was to base itself and train before heading to Stockholm to compete. We did this amazing flight which took us a total of 52 hours. We flew from Sydney via Auckland, Honolulu, Anchorage, London and Frankfurt and then drove the rest of the way to Holland. It was a really, really tough trip. Everyone travelled with their horse on the planes, which was an experience in itself. It doesn’t necessarily happen like that any more. The plane held a massive cargo with 90 horses on board. There was a different system for loading the horses then. The horses were loaded into pallets, which are more or less like the inside of a two-or three-horse float, and these were moved up to the plane entrance. Then the horses were led off and into the plane and the pallets were rebuilt around them. Now they put the horse onto a pallet and load the whole thing into the plane using a hydraulic system. On that particular trip I had all sorts of loading experiences. On the flight from England they had an old-fashioned system where you walked the horses up a really, really long ramp from the ground into the side of the plane. So far I have been very lucky with travelling and haven’t had any nasty incidents.

Although I had competed in New Zealand the year before on a training trip, I was still green when it came to competing internationally. So the trip to Stockholm was a great learning curve. There was pressure yes, but every time you go into a competition arena you feel pressure to do the very best you can. If you are even slightly competitive you can’t help it … or I can’t anyway! And I am always disappointed with what I have done because I always think it could have been better. We were very aware that we were the first proper Australian team for dressage and sending us was a very expensive exercise and a massive undertaking for everyone concerned. So there was a certain amount of pressure to do well.

While we were in Holland we entered a few competitions as warm-ups. These were quite daunting as we all felt so inexperienced. We also made some small trips to France and England to compete. However, when the day of the WEG competition arrived most of the nerves were gone. By the time you have gone through all the selection processes, riding the test itself is not so overwhelming. Once you get to the actual competition all you think is, ‘I am going to ride as hard as I can and do the best test possible.’ Five of us had made the team knowing that only four of us would actually get to ride in the WEG competition. Anne Honner was the rider not selected and she was wonderful about it. I always remember thinking that if I were ever in that position I hoped I could be as good as she was about it.

Stirling Wilton did really well at WEG. In fact, that test he did was the best test he and I had ever done up until that point. It was one of those experiences where I felt like I was in the zone, but he seemed to be in the zone as well. It all came together and happened in the right way — it was fantastic. You can put all that effort in and not do the best test you can and that is always a big disappointment. Riding in front of a big crowd did not faze me too much. I usually concentrate so hard that on the whole I am not aware of the crowd. All you want is to do the best job you can and to do that I have to concentrate and be focused. It is not always so easy to get the horse so centred and focused, however! I knew Wilton very well by then and I think that was a big part of our success. The more you can trust each other the better you can perform. We ended up about halfway down the field in 36th position, the highest position of the Australians. The team itself came 13th, a great result for Australia.

Not long after that, Margaret Evans, a supporter of mine and Heath’s, approached me and said she wanted to buy a horse for me to ride. Her kids had always been keen on horses but had grown up and moved away and she wanted to keep her interest going. She was a doctor and my dad was a doctor and I think she felt we should stick together. So out of sheer generosity on her part we went off to Europe to look for a horse, where we found Exellent or ‘Joccy’ as we called him. He was at Medium level when we purchased him. He was very extravagant, with lots of movement and enthusiasm and he felt as though he would end up a fabulous horse.

However, he was a tricky character and very, very hot to ride. He never bucked me off or anything like that; instead he just revved himself up into a state. He was like a hyperactive kid. I would try and calm him down and say, ‘It’s OK, 90% will do,’ but he would always run at 500%. And this was in everything that he did. If you went to the paddock 20 times a day, 20 times a day he would always come tearing up to meet you, bouncing on the spot. He was terribly enthusiastic but consequently needed lots and lots of work. He was actually very tiring! I used to say that all the men in my life were like that, because Heath is Mr 500% too. At one stage, when Joccy was still at Prix St George level, I was riding a horse called Barrington Ock Tedi for Shaun France when she was expecting her son Lewis, and he was very high maintenance as well. It was completely exhausting as I would ride Ock Tedi, then Joccy, then have to deal with Heath!

I found an old training diary the other day which I had kept when I was working Joccy and I had written in it nearly every single day just one word: ‘wild’. When my students today say to me that they don’t want to go to a competition because their horse is not going so well, I think back to all the times I used to drive the 13 hours down to Melbourne with Joccy on board knowing that he was still wild, knowing there was no way we were going to win, but also knowing that to make him improve I had to get him into that competition arena as much as possible. He was a wonderful horse and I knew he would be worth the wait, but I had to live through a lot of fairly wild tests before we got our act together. I still use that example when I am teaching and tell my students that sometimes you just have to do it.

We found the best way to warm Joccy up for competition was to take him out lots of times. So for example I might take him out three or four times during the day and work him for about 20 minutes each time. The more I took him out the more he would settle. I got to know his little routine well, so I would take him out, put him away, take him out, put him away, take him out, put him away then take him out and ride the test. It was exhausting but it was what worked for him and he was worth it. And if you had a quiet horse with you as well it made you appreciate them all the more!

A lot of judges, particularly overseas judges, gave me hope by saying ‘Keep going with him, he is going to be better when he is a Grand Prix horse.’ Harry Boldt, the legendary German dressage rider and team trainer said to me once, ‘This horse will be fine once he is about 13. Don’t expect him to be a great young horse.’ Joccy was always great but was just so hyper. But that paid off when he reached Grand Prix level and had to perform the Grand Prix, the Grand Prix Special and the freestyle because he was still fresh by the end. And at that level you do also need a certain amount of spark and pizzazz. However, I am not sure I would want one that ran that hot again. He was really, really hot.

In 1999 Joccy and I had got our act together enough to win the Australian Pacific League of the World Cup. This meant that I could compete in the World Cup Final in ’s-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands in the following year. This trip would prove to be one of the most memorable times for me in both positive and negative ways.

The way the Dressage World Cup works is that the world is divided into different areas called leagues and Australia and New Zealand are in the Pacific league. The winner of the Pacific League final automatically qualifies to go to the World Cup final, held every year. The final is made up of a Grand Prix test and then the top 15 riders get to ride the freestyle [Kür] test and whoever wins that is the overall winner. It is a partially funded trip. The FEI pays a certain amount, the Equestrian Federation of Australia [now called Equestrian Australia or EA] pays a certain amount, and the owner of the horse pays the rest. Of course, as a rider you also contribute, as you are not at home working and earning money. While you are away you inevitably spend money too so it ends up being an expensive exercise. But I always think going overseas to compete is worth it. You gain so much experience; the stimulus you get from training and warming up with the best riders in the world is unbeatable. It pushes you out of your comfort zone and motivates you to improve, as well as offering you experiences you would not otherwise have.

As the World Cup final we had qualified for was in 2000, the year the Olympics were to be held in Sydney, I had some people suggest that I should save the horse for Olympic selection. However, I think that you run the risk of something happening to the horse regardless, whether you save them for one competition or another, and even if I did save Joccy for the selection I might not make the team anyway. So I thought, ‘Blow it, I’ll just go to the final and get as much out of it as I can. Even if I finish last, I’ll just do it!’

In preparation I travelled to Holland to train with Tineke Bartels [twice Dutch Silver Olympic medallist in dressage] at her Academy. While I was there I was given the opportunity to enter a competition in Paris at the de Bercy stadium, which is right on the banks of the Seine. It was a World Cup qualifier for the European League and I hadn’t planned on going but when I was asked if I would like to attend I said, ‘Yes thank you, that would be great!’

I didn’t have anyone to drive me there so I borrowed a car and float from the Bartelses and followed some friends into Paris, towing the horse by myself. It was quite daunting but I remember ringing a friend and saying, ‘I cannot believe it, here I am with my horse in the middle of Paris on the banks of the Seine.’ I went for a walk down by the river and I had to keep pinching myself! Later, I went out for lunch at Montmartre, which overlooked the whole of Paris, and I couldn’t believe just how amazing and special it was to be there, especially with my horse. That will be a lifelong memory.

I didn’t have a groom or anybody with me for that competition. I did have someone lined up to help me at the World Cup final, but this was an unplanned competition so I was completely on my own. Although it is always better to have someone on the ground to help I thought the experience of competing in Paris was too special to pass up just