Horse Riding - Final Reflection

I have been horse riding for many many years but just as any sport it is an area where you can always learn more. The great thing about riding is also that there are so many different forms and types of riding. Often they are so different that even if you are a professional at one type, like jumping, you can be a complete beginner at something else.  This is why I enjoy it so much.

To me, the competing is the biggest challenge because of my stage fright. I have been scared to do anything in front of an audience for quite a while but have also learnt that practise is the only thing that helps. Sports are good in this way as the team can motivate you and make you feel more secure. Some say that horse riding is not a team sport but I strongly disagree. It is you and the horse in the arena and to achieve good results both of you have to work and you have to be able to understand each other and cooperate in a smooth way. Now isn’t that teamwork? Furthermore a horse is an individual of it’s own but also, the only way you can communicate is actually body language, which I feel, makes the relationship and team work between horse and rider so much more special than that of a normal team.

Another area of improvement is sportsmanship. The show areas, like Jamhuri Park are packed with people and horses during events and the competition is usually tough. In fact, the horse world is a society of its own. Connections and family name can be even more important than whether you are a good rider or not. This has really been getting on my nerves, as I am just one of those ‘new girls’ and have had a hard time to fit into the horse society, As I am also quite competitive it makes it even harder to lose to people that I do not get along with but of course, this is something that will happened during the rest of everyone’s life and after competition I have learnt to again, try to see things positively but above all, focus on my own riding and my own horse. The competition should only be with yourself and trying to improve personal scores. Otherwise you create frustration and it will not turn out well.

Horse riding has been challenging, both mentally and physically, I am thinking mostly of the recovery time after the injury. Because my knee injury was due to an accident on horseback I was a little worried that I would have been affected negatively and gotten scared. I however worked on this while I was recovering and couldn’t ride anyway, because I realised that one accident couldn’t ruin my love for horse riding. With determination I decided there was no way I would quite. However there were now physical restrains. After the injury in October 2010 I had to wait until April to get the surgery. During that time I was not allowed to do any jumping, and always wear a brace. Then after the surgery I had to wait another couple of months to be able to ride again. Once I could actually start riding regularly again I realised how much muscle I had lost and also precision when riding. It took a while to really get back to the stage I had been in.

Since my knee was fully healed I also started a new type of riding – polo. This is very different from the way I usually ride. Of course just holding the stick and hitting the ball and not the horse’s legs is hard enough but also the fundamental riding is different. Just the fact that you now ride with four rains in one hand instead of two rains (mostly) in two hands took some time to get used to. However I have advanced a lot since I started and I feel like it really broadened my understanding of horses and developed my riding. Breaking my speed record when racing was probably the thing I am most proud of. It was indeed scary because of the amount of trust you have to put in the horse but the feeling afterwards was amazing and there are few times when I have felt so accomplished.