Showjumping

As an amateur showjumper with the hopes to one day become a professional, I can tell you that the worst thing a non-horse rider can tell me (or any equestrian!) is that, "horse riding isn't a sport." Well, I'm here to tell you otherwise!

So what is a sport? In the dictionary, a sport is defined as "an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment." If you've ever seen the Olympics, you may have noticed that showjumping is just one of three different equestrian disciplines in which riders from all over the world come to compete.

Showjumpers train rigorously for our sport. Not only will we spend hours every week perfecting the smallest move, preparing for the most unlikely scenarios, but we also train our bodies to be able to handle the stress exerted on them by horse riding, just like any other athlete. Except, unlike other athletes, we also have to train another, someone who we literally have to trust with our lives in many cases... our horse.

Many people have said to me in the past that the horse does all the work - all I have to do is sit there. However, in order for a horse and rider to succeed, they must understand each other completely, and also be very highly trained in their chosen discipline. I could go into excruciating detail about how I train my horse for competition but I won't. What I will point out is the nature/nurture behaviour theory, which I'm sure many of you have heard of, but I'll briefly explain it anyway.

The theory of Nature vs Nurture looks at how any human or animal learns how to behave. Is this behaviour something they are inherently born with, or is it something that has to be taught by a parent? The same theory can be used to explain training and working with horses. Yes, we can breed into our horses the ability to jump higher, to move faster, to be more agile, and these well bred horses do have the innate ability to jump. But to say they are born knowing what to do is like saying that every human is born with the ability to become a professional footballer. That is to say, yes we are born with the ability to kick a ball around once we've grown enough to do so, but there is no way anyone could get to that level in the sport without training or someone to show them how.

This is where the partnership between horse and rider comes in. It is the rider's job to show the horse what to do, to keep them calm and concentrating, and to bring out the best of the horse's ability.

In competition, a horse can behave very differently to how they would behave training at home. They've travelled on the lorry, they're in a new and unknown environment, and they're surrounded by unfamiliar horses. If they have competed before, the horse will remember their previous experiences and this will also effect how they react to competing. A horse's flight instinct is very strong, but they're also very intuitive when it comes to human emotions. If the rider is nervous, even if they are good at hiding it from people, the horse will pick up on it and react accordingly. A nervous or excitable horse is far more difficult to control, and therefore can become dangerous in a competition like showjumping where the distances between jumps are precise enough to mean the difference between a good round or a fall resulting in a serious injury.

So what is showjumping? Showjumping is a high speed sport, not without danger, that requires the horse and rider to be working in harmony in order to ride the perfect round. Showjumping can be terrifying, but mostly it is exhilarating and extremely rewarding because after riding that perfect round, you as the rider know it is because hours and hours of mud, sweat and tears has cultivated such a strong bond between you and your horse that you can react to any situation almost without thinking.