Feature: Chris Nott Special Olympics

from Equestrian Hub Magazine Issue 4 2021

On My Tackbox: Breaking it Down

FEATURE

Ready or Nott

Some people give of themselves more than others, and as CHRISTINE ARMISHAW discovered, Special Olympics National Equestrian Coordinator Chris Nott has turned giving into her superpower.

Admiring the view after a three hour ride up to the Hollywood sign in LA (Image courtesy of Chris Nott).

To be in the volunteer role of National Equestrian Coordinator for the Special Olympics doesn’t require one to be a superhero, although that’s what the riders and supporters involved with Chris Nott think she is. And when you hear everything this amazing woman has put into orchestrating the Australian team, time and again, you wouldn’t be chastised for thinking she might be a version of Wonder Woman too! But to Chris, this all cropped up simply because it was just something she thought she might be able to help out with. Fifteen years later, the progress she’s made is astonishing. of the highlights she’s experienced in her role. Before she even begins, she forewarns me: “If I cry, I’m only crying because it’s such a good experience and I’m reliving it!”

The backstory

The structure of the Special Olympics is much like any other riding discipline, with certain qualifications required to enter the next stage. Athletes aim to make each team at the stepping stones of regionals, states and then nationals, in the hopes of being selected for the World Team. Australia was held in Melbourne in 2014. Initially the first 10 to 12 participants came from Riding for the Disabled centres, with a grand total of eight athletes travelling down to Victoria with Chris as part of the Queensland State Team.

The next major event was the 2015 World Summer Games in Los Angeles. “Being Australia’s very first contribution to a World Games, we got an allocation of two athletes for LA. I was accepted as Head Coach, and we took a young man from South Australia and a middleaged lady from Western Australia,” Chris recalls. This memory gets her and I can hear the emotion in her voice: “Oh, it was such an amazing, amazing event,”

she says, as she tries to hold back those happy tears she said might come. “The whole world was there, the competition was so tough. We came back with gold, silver and bronze medals, and the young man actually won the very last event of all the sports, on the very last day of the whole games!”

With the rider from WA winning silver and two bronze, it was a cracking success for the newbie head coach and our fledgling Australian team, who now had their sights firmly set on Abu Dhabi, where the next Games were to be held in four years' time.

The equestrian programme in Queensland grew in leaps and bounds. “Our biggest problem was, and still is, sporting equipment,” says Chris, referring to horses. “In most organisations, to get equipment, you can apply for grants and funding, but you can’t for horses because they’re livestock.” On top of financial constraints, the challenge of finding horses that are suitable mounts adds another layer. “Everybody is happy to give you a broken-down racehorse that’s sprung a tendon,” she tells me. “But, as you can imagine, these are not much use to the Special Olympics athletes.”

When the Abu Dhabi Games rolled around, Chris again applied for the head coach role and was successful. “This time I took four athletes and that trip was the biggest eye-opener in the world. The money over there is just off the planet! Princesses and sheiks were presenting the medals,” she recalls. The experience was truly something else and the Australian team of two boys and two girls did their country proud. “They did amazingly. We got three golds and three silvers,” Chris says, smiling as she relays the results.

Happy to help

I ask Chris what made her decide to get involved in the Special Olympics in the first place. “They had a call-up for volunteers for the 2006 National Games on the Gold Coast, and I thought well, I’ll just go down and volunteer for it. I stood in this line of about 300 people, and it was the funniest thing. I was way down the end of the line and chatting to the people next to me,” Chris explains. Obviously curious, they asked

whether she had a son or daughter with a disability, or if she knew anyone with a disability. “And I said no, I just thought there might be something I could do, you know, run around, timekeep, all of that,” she says. “Anyway, I ended up as the MC in the main arena! After that, I went down to Newcastle as the announcer for the Junior National Games basketball and swimming. I absolutely enjoyed it; it was so good.”

When I suggest that perhaps Chris is simply a genuine, super-awesome good Samaritan, she chuckles: “Oh, no, it wasn’t like that, I just thought there was something I could do to help out,” which to me, confirms she is one.

The equestrian program wasn’t introduced into the Special Olympics in Australia until Adelaide 2010, when it was a demonstration sport. “With the lead up to the 2014 Games underway, I decided to give it a crack and see how Equestrian would go on the Gold Coast. I had phenomenal support from the Gold Coast committee, and there’s not one equestrian bone among them!” she tells me.

The whole world was there, the competition was so tough. We came back with gold, silver and bronze medals, and the young man actually won the very last event of all the sports, on the very last day of the whole games!

When there’s a will

So that explains how she first made it to a Games as a volunteer and how the equestrian component of the Special Olympics came to be, but to get from there to National Equestrian Coordinator, surely she must have had some serious previous involvement with horses.

Chris pauses, then dumbfounds me: “Ah, no,” she laughs. “This is the weirdest story ever, but it’s the truth. In 2002, I was on my back porch reading a Sunday Mail

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Photo Credit Genevieve Munson

The Special Olympics in Abu Dhabi were widely promoted with these posters, the perfect backdrop for a team shot (Image courtesy of Chris Nott).

article ‘Five things to do in the Year of the Outback’. The very first one was ‘Go Cattle Droving’, and I thought, I’m gonna give that a go.” When Chris told her husband he wasn’t exactly supportive, pointing out that she knew nothing about horses and had never been further than the Great Dividing Range.

Fuelled by his words Chris booked in, paid the $500 deposit, and then went and did it. “The hardest thing was leaving my kids. I’d never even left them with a babysitter before and there was no phone reception out there back in those days,” she says.“I signed up for eight days. By day two I was so sore. They put me on this ex-race horse, if I’d have known then what I know now …” she trails off with a laugh. “I’ve never been in so much pain in my whole life! Anyway, I got through the eight days, then I went home.”

But Chris couldn’t settle back into her

That’s the hardest thing I struggle with. With the thousands of disability riders that there are, you’ve only got so many horses.

office job, so she rebooked for another eight days, which evolved into a threemonth escapade. She went back a total of four times, going to work for short stints in between. By the end, she was obsessed with the whole horse and cattle scene, and in a curious twist of fate was given a Quarter Horse by a gentleman on one of the drives. From there, Chris became immersed in campdrafting - the horse bug had bitten her!

Facing challenges and looking ahead

Our Special Olympic athletes are more than brave, but as Chris points out, they have to have one hundred per cent trust that you’ll give them a horse that’s perfect for them. “That’s the hardest thing I struggle with. With the thousands of disability riders that there are, you’ve only got so many horses,” she explains. Her commitment is seemingly endless. She gets on every horse herself, to ride it, understand it, and have the clearest picture of which athlete she should pair it with. “I would love to see a continuation of training for coaches who coach athletes with a disability. It’s a big issue nationwide, because there is a shortage of such people,” she tells me. “I have athletes call me every week wanting to join the equestrian program, but we need more coaches.”

Does Chris have any plans of stopping? Hardly! The next Games will be held in April 2023 and her hand is up once more for the head coach position, a role in which she clearly excels – and this time it’s destination Berlin, Germany.