The Chronicle is proud to announce eventer Sinead Halpin as the newest addition to our string of bloggers! Sinead, of Oldwick, N.J., is a member of the USEF Developing Rider A List and is aiming for her first CCI****, Rolex Kentucky, this spring. You can check out her previous blogs at sineadchalpin.blogspot.com.
So I’m teaching a one-day clinic this weekend, and a young girl is cantering around on a nice horse. I’m not sure of her age, but I can tell she’s in that formative stage, somewhere between a passenger and a rider. Whether she’ll grow up to be a “good” or “bad” rider is yet to be determined.
“How old are you?” I ask.
“I’m… Um… Ah… I’m 13,” responds the young girl on the intermediate schoolmaster she’s now competing at novice.
I respond, “Perfect—Old enough to start taking responsibility. At 12 you’re taking direction well, and at 13 you get to start voicing your opinion!”
(I’m sure the parent of this child is understanding exactly what I am talking about!)
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I get an eager-to-please but confused look back from the “Uh, um, um” 13-year-old, so I ask, “What are the rider’s two most important responsibilities in eventing?”
She responds (with words either beyond her years or, more likely, words repeated from numerous coaches) “Um… Ahh… Um, balance and, uhh… impulsion?”
I’m giving the girl some encouraging words to make the concept easier to understand when I hear my phone make a familiar noise from my jacket pocket. I grab it and look down to see that a student of mine has texted me a picture of her computer screen, showing that my Rolex entry is actually official. And then I look back up at the girl in front of me and remember being 13.
When I was 16, I did my first one-star, and at 18 I won my next one-star. When I was 19 I did my first two-star and finished inside the top 10, and the following spring I also did my first three-star. Given that quick progression, I promptly assumed I would do one more event at that level that fall, and I’d be riding in my first four-star by the time I was 20.
I had no doubt in my head that by 29 (the age I am now) I would’ve competed on numerous teams for my country and have jumped around courses I dreamed about like Badminton and Burghley. I was a lot like the 13-year-old girl using big words like “balance” and “impulsion”—words that are easy to say but harder to understand. Not to mention figuring how to achieve them, which is a completely different ballgame.
Of course, the best laid plans often go awry. After competing at the Foxhall CCI*** in Georgia in 2001, it was eight years before I competed at another three-star. My horse got hurt, and I soon realized how lucky I had been to have had him and have gotten the experience I did.
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“Experience” isn’t actually what I got from the time I had with this horse, but I got a taste of the top levels. I spent the next seven years going through what would actually give me the experience, appreciation, tools and respect that is vital to have for my horses and the sport of eventing.
I started a sales business, I galloped race horses, I was a waitress, I rode any horse anyone would let me, I moved to England to work and compete, I came back, I fell off, I broke bones, I won some competitions, I got eliminated at a lot more competitions, and I started to develop my own instincts, style and drive.
In 2009, I rode my current top horse, Manoir De Carneville, aka “Tate,” in fifth place in the victory gallop at the Fair Hill CCI***, and I remember smiling and giving him a soft pat on the neck. It wasn’t the exaggerated smile of a kid who’s living only in that moment and ecstatically smacking her horse on the neck, but a little smile to myself of appreciation for the last eight years and a pat for my beautiful horse.
For just a moment as I stand in the arena at the beginning of this lesson, I have that same secret smile when I see the names Manoir de Carneville and Sinead Halpin on the Rolex entry list. Then I turn back to the 13-year-old version of me, who’s waiting for her next bit of instruction.
“Speed and direction are the two most important rider responsibilities,” I resume. “You must tell the horse the direction you want to go, and you must decide at what speed it is appropriate to get there…”
