EXCEL TALENT SCHEME
Sarah Fitton writes About me
I am a 16 year old dressage rider based in Derbyshire. I live near Bakewell and attend school there where I am studying for my A levels. I have been riding since I was about 5 and belonged to the High Peak Hunt Pony Club and Chapel and District Riding Club participating in camps and all disciplines before concentrating on dressage at about age 12. I have been very lucky to have some fab ponies before moving onto horses about 18 months ago at which time, I was lucky enough to be able to buy my current horse Zeldick. He is a 16hh bay gelding aged 7. He is bred by Scandic out of a Jazz mare and I went out to Holland to try him which is actually really easy to do as they arrange loads for you to see in a day. I tried all sorts from babies to school masters but fell in love with “Dicky” who was at the yard of Jeroen Hulsman whom I knew as I occasionally attend his clinics here in the UK.
I keep Dicky at Dunston Park Equestrian with Phil and Sonia Baines. I have trained with Sonia for about 7 years from coming up to her shoulders to now being 4 inches taller than her!
Excel talent scheme
I have always attended BYRDS (British Young Riders Dressage Scheme) Northern region training and was alerted to the BEF Excel talent scheme. This is a new programme which runs for 2 years and had quite stringent entry criteria, so I nervously filled in my application form in August and was absolutely delighted to be 1 of 12 dressage riders chosen between the ages of 15 to 24. The scheme covers the 4 Olympic disciplines and is aimed at promising combinations who aspire to be future Olympians.
2 rider groups and I had been assigned Gareth Hughes and was somewhat nervous aSs the first to go. After watching me warm-up for 15 minutes, Gareth had quickly assessed our weaknesses. Dicky is a very forward going horse but not always responsive to my leg aids so escapes by ‘running through me’. Gareth got me to do lots of work on a 15m circle going from shoulder-in to travers and leg- yielding in and out and rewarding him when he responded but kept the pressure on when he didn’t in both trot and canter.
We had a chat with a sports psychologist, Nichola Kentzer. She made us think about who we admire and look to for inspiration and what qualities they have and which are most important to us. We learnt to distinguish between intrinsic motivation (waking up at 5am because we love to see our horse’s bright eyes pop over the stable door and hear his soft whinny as we start to feed) and extrinsic motivation (waking up at 5am because we are paid to do it, or it lets us spend the rest of the day doing something else we would enjoy more). The key was to
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We had an induction day in October on foot where we met the other participants and had chats about the scheme and what was expected of us; we also had talks on the anti-doping rules for both humans and equines and an inspirational chat from Maria Eilberg who shared her success story and showed us some of her medals.
This was followed by a 2-day performance camp on t28th/29th November at Vale View Equestrian Centre. We had been divided into
We also had sessions with the farrier, Ben Benson, who was very pleased with his shoeing. I have only recently started to have him shod behind and was told this was absolutely the right thing to do. This was followed by a session with the nutritionist and I had kept a food diary for 3 days and was somewhat concerned about the amount of chocolate I eat! This didn’t get too many criticisms but was told I need to drink more milk and ensure I have snacks every 2 hours on competition days to help keep up my energy levels.
have a lot more intrinsic motives as they are the ones that keep us going longer and give us more satisfaction and thankfully we all did have mainly intrinsic motives. We learnt about goal-setting, which we are all pretty expert at otherwise we wouldn’t have been sitting there, but in particular how to use goals to improve performance by devoting them to self-improvement rather than just outcomes.
Day 2 started with a strength and conditioning class with exercises to improve our core strength and stability. I also had another lesson with Gareth who thought we were both more relaxed than the previous day and he had us doing lots of leg yields across the huge arena at Vale View and, although Dicky kept trying to change in canter, I was told to keep going and come round again and eventually we got it and he started to listen to my aids. As a background there was a horrendous storm outside and the rain and wind were really rattling on the roof but Dicky was an absolute star and wasn’t bothered at all. I finished with a session with the development coach, Becky Moody, who talked to us about what we had been working
on and what our goals were between now and the next camp in February. In between, I managed to watch quite a few of the other lessons and it was really good to see the others who all had different strengths and areas to work on and see the different exercises they were given which I might also be able to use.
All-in-all an exhausting but fabulous two days and I feel really privileged to have been selected.
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