‘I’ve had to learn to ride again’
It seems like everything Scott Borland does in life, he does well. The former mounted games World Champion turned show jumper was top of his year at university and is now a successful real estate agent in the Waikato.
But even though he was an excellent and experienced horseman, Scott says he he practically had to how to ride all over again when it came to jumping.
Scott took up games at pony club in his native Scotland, and quickly excelled. He was part of the team that won the prestigious Prince Philip Cup at Wembley in 1987, and went on to captain the Scottish team that won gold at the world champs in Ireland.
The training was year-round, and dedication required was huge. “You’ve got to be a gymnast, and you need to have a really gutsy mindset. It really is a team effort and gives you amazing life skills,” he says.
But after graduating from university and working in finance, Scott didn’t have a lot of time for horses until he moved to New Zealand in 2004.
Ready for a career change, he devoted himself to coaching, riding and training in New Zealand’s fledgling mounted games scene.
At the time, we were ranked 21st out of the 21 countries who compete in games; Scott’s ambitious goal was to make New Zealand the World Champions.
And he achieved that twice; the first time in 2008 in Australia, when he rode in the team, and then again in 2013 at on home soil, when he was the coach.
“I’m the oldest mounted games champion in the world,” he says. “I was in a team with 19- and 20-year-olds, and I was 37, so I had to work really hard to keep up with them.”
It was then that he switched to show jumping. He quickly had success with his generous stationbred, Skewi, but realised as he moved up the heights that he was out of his depth.
“It was terrifying and I decided that if I was going to show jump, I needed to do it from a different point of view.”
He has been training with Clarke Johnstone, and has been competing at Amateur and more recently the Pro-Am level while he consolidates his new skills. “When I look back, I realise it was pure naivety, entering a 1.40m class when I couldn’t even canter on a 20m circle. With Clarke I’ve been trying to get the foundation right so when I do move up, hopefully it will be more consistent.”
After so many years in a team sport, Scott says he found show jumping to be quite lonely at first. And most of all, he found he had to re-invent his riding.
“In mounted games, when you want to go faster, all you do is lean forward. To slow down, you lean back. I rode using neck reining and my upper body, with no legs at all.
“Now, I’m trying to get my legs to tell the horse to turn and not to lean forward. It’s almost the opposite of mounted games and it’s definitely a challenge, but that’s the appeal.”
What the two sports do have in common, though, is that you have to be brave, fast and develop a connection with your horse.
“You will not beat a mounted games rider in a jump-off!” laughs Scott. “We can get a horse around a corner quicker than anyone.”
A bit on the side
Taihape’s Jenny Pearce isn’t one for sticking to convention – in fact she pushes the rules as far as she possibly can including wearing a dressage tailcoat with sparkly lurex pinstripes and bright pink points. She participates in an unusual mixture of equestrian sports: two-star level eventing, Advanced dressage and side-saddle classes.
Her homebred horses True Steel and Top Steel are full brother and sister, both being by the Trakehner stallion Loewenherz out of a thoroughbred mare. She bred them for eventing, but although True Steel went up to 1.05m level, he wasn’t reliable on cross-country. “He would dump me between the jumps when he spooked and then it would take a team of people to catch him. He was infamous for legging it all over the place.”
Jenny took up dressage with him instead; her trainer, Bill Noble, felt the horse could have Grand Prix potential.
Fast-forward a few years, and Jenny and ‘Trevor’, who is now 13, are competing at Prix St Georges level, which is not something she’d ever envisaged herself doing.
“I was your classic eventer – I thought dressage was a necessary evil you had to do before you got on to the jumping. I grew up in a show jumping family and when I was a little tacker my Dad always said that those who rode dressage were those who were too scared to jump!”
Eventing is still her favourite discipline though. “As I say to Bill when he gives me a lecture – yes, dressage is fun, but there are only so many circles you can do before you need to go for a hoon around a cross-country course.”
Jenny is fascinated by the different personalities in the various disciplines, and despairs at what she calls ‘the tails effect’ in dressage.
“Since I started to wear tails [permitted from Level 6], I’ve realised that all the other riders are to a certain extent scared of you, and stay out of your way, which is quite sad.”
However, she considers dressage her ‘playtime’. “In most cases we are last in our classes against all the flash people, but our percentages are slowly improving ,which is the main thing. As I always say: a bad day at dressage, you get a low percentage; a bad day eventing, you end up in hospital!”
Jenny’s eventer, Top Steel, is quite different to her older brother, both in appearance and in nature, and is bold and brave on cross-country. The pair’s biggest achievement to date is finishing fourth in the CCI2* at the National One-Day Championships at Kihikihi in 2019, beating Jock Paget in the process.
“Top Steel is a little black rocketship who only has one speed. The bigger the jumps, the happier she is, but getting her calm for dressage has been years in the making,” says Jenny.
And as for side-saddle, Jenny taught herself out of a book, after her sister found a saddle in the rafters of a woolshed. Later, in England, she trained as a side-saddle instructor.
She has competed in dressage and working hunter, and even hunted full wire, riding side-saddle.
Last year at HOY, Jenny was the side-saddle convenor (as well as competing in both side-saddle and dressage with True Steel), and was also the cross-country controller.
Juggling all three disciplines as well as a full time job requires a great deal of organisation, to say the least. Another downside is having to have three separate lots of gear. Luckily, Jenny makes her own clothes, which allows her to incorporate her trademark pink in her outfits.
As well as her pink-pointed tailcoat, she has a short jacket for eventing that boasts a pink collar and cuffs, and a bright pink body protector.
“I also have a pink dressage whip. The first time I took it anywhere there were major ructions with everyone was rushing for their rulebooks. It was wonderful.”
Jack of all trades
It was only by default that Feilding rider Liana Mikaera switched from eventing to dressage five years ago, when her Arabian gelding Cyprus Al Thaquib injured himself. However, now she is addicted and wouldn’t have it any other way.
Liana and 13-year-old ‘Chaos’ have been turning heads all season, as the grey gelding is an unusual sight in his Advanced level dressage tests – Liana believes he’s the first purebred Arab to compete at this level here. And they’ve been doing exceptionally well, in 2020 winning the Advanced title at Taihape Champs, Reserve Champion at Taranaki and Central Districts, and finishing second overall in both the Zilco Musical Freestyle and Hobson Horsecoaches Super 5 series.
Liana bought Chaos, who is by the Egyptian Arabian stallion Joda Aloof (Au), when he was 18 months old, from Cyprus Arabians in New Plymouth. He was originally intended to be a pony project to sell on, but he grew much bigger than expected, to 159.5cm.
Liana has produced him herself into a complete allrounder, competing in showing, show jumping, games, show hunter and eventing.
The pair were placed at Horse of the Year in the 1.20m show jumping when Chaos was just six, but eventing was Liana’s main focus.
They had just stepped up to one-star level when Chaos suddenly refused to go near even easy fences; it took several months to get a diagnosis, but eventually it was discovered he had bone chips in his fetlocks.
Even after surgery, the prognosis wasn’t great and Liana was told he’d likely end up a ‘happy hacker’ at best.
“He’s my best friend, so I wasn’t going to sell him or leave him in the paddock. So I put my eventing aspirations aside and decided to give dressage a go. I had always liked watching the bigwigs do the Grand Prix stuff but before that it was never on my radar to do straight dressage.”
The pair have progressed steadily up the grades, and Liana says it wasn’t until this season, at Level 6, that she’s felt like a fish out of water riding a non-purpose-bred horse
“I did wonder what people were going to think, and I was hoping I didn’t get judged too badly! But everyone has been so supportive – there are a lot of people who tell me it’s really inspiring that I’m riding an Arab, showing that other breeds can do it too. It is hard competing against the warmbloods, because he doesn’t have that huge movement, but it’s our own personal journey.”
Chaos has learned most of the movements easily, but due to his build finds canter pirouettes quite difficult.
“And being an Arab, he has his head in the air. I get the comment ‘tense’ on my sheets sometimes, but he’s not tense, he’s just an Arab! He also holds his tail up high and flicks it around, which the judges don’t really like, but that’s another Arab thing – when he jumped, he’d flick it over his back over every fence.”
Liana trains with Julie Pearson, who she says has really accelerated her progress and goals. “Julie has trained her thoroughbred to Grand Prix, so she understands non-warmblood horses and how to make them move.
“I am completely hooked on dressage now and absolutely love it. It’s harder than jumping – there’s a lot more to it.”
Crossing the line
Brigitte Smith comes from a family of endurance champions and during her younger years she looked set to follow in their footsteps, winning many National Junior titles and representing New Zealand both here and overseas. In 2014, she groomed at the World Games for her mum Andrea and sister Georgia, who were both on the Kiwi endurance team.
However, from a young age Brigitte was always more interested in show jumping. In 2016, after winning the National Junior 160km Championship, she gave up endurance altogether to focus on jumping.
Now, she has a team of lovely horses she has produced herself. In 2018 she was Junior Rider of the Year and she has also had wins and placings at Young Rider level with her top horse, HR Lanardo.
Brigitte lives with her family on a sheep, beef and horse farm, 40 minutes east of Taihape. She got her first pony at the age of two and started competing in endurance at just five.
Show jumping came into the picture when Brigitte was asked to ride a couple of ponies for her neighbour, Liz Rennie at Meersbrooke Stud. “I remember very clearly Liz having to explain to me that I could only jump oxers going a certain way at my first show – I jumped the fences from every direction!”
When she was 12, Brigitte’s parents agreed to buy her a jumping pony of her own and they purchased five-year-old Little Velocity, from Kirsty Moffat at Skyhi Horses.
Brigitte produced the mare to pony Grand Prix and she now has a colt foal by the stallion Calgary GNZ.
“It was pointed out that we did not have the funds to purchase ready-made or even partly-made horses, so I had to produce them from scratch. If I wanted any more jumping horses, I had to fund them myself, which has been great as I now own all the horses on my show jumping team and have bred a few foals. I have built up to owning about 10 horses, all funded, owned and produced myself.”
The most transferable skill from her endurance days, she says, is patience. “I can see the big picture and to prepare the horse correctly to be successful in the future. I also understand that fitness is extremely important, and therefore my show jumpers are mainly worked around the farm with the endurance horses, so they are fit enough to do what I want them to do.”
One thing she doesn’t miss about endurance is the start times. “In endurance, you have to get up at midnight and ride through the night, so waking up at 6am to feed the show jumpers at shows is a bit of a luxury!”
Multi-tasking internationals
Riders who are skilled enough to compete at the very top level in more than one discipline are rare – but Germany has three of the best, in Michael Jung, Ingrid Klimke and Sandra Auffarth. Although Michael is best known for his eventing achievements, he has done increasing amounts of show jumping and rode on his first CSIO5* Nations Cup team at Hickstead in 2019. Sandra also jumps 1.50-1.60m on a regular basis, while Ingrid competes at Grand Prix dressage level and has show jumped up to 1.50m – no wonder the German eventers are such a formidable force!
Swedish rider Peder Fredricson evented at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona at the age of 20 before he switched to show jumping, in which he is the reigning Olympic silver medalist. Spaniard Luis Alvarez Cevera, the New Zealand eventing team’s jumping coach, rode in both the show jumping and eventing at Barcelona. And Badminton and Burghley winner Lucinda Fredericks won a dressage Grand Prix back in 2002 – a week before she won at Blenheim on Headley Britannia.
In New Zealand, of course, we have quite a few versatile equestrians, including Mark Todd, who competed in both show jumping and eventing at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Other top New Zealand eventers to show jump at World Cup level are Vaughn Jefferis, Blyth Tait, Clarke Johnstone and Nick Brooks, while Angela Lloyd has won at Advanced level eventing and also competes in Grand Prix dressage.
