Young Rider: Bella Plumridge

Competing in the 2021 Prix St Georges Sky Park Dressage Championships at Werribee (Image by Shoulder Fore Photography).

YOUNG RIDER

Ahead of her time

With an extraordinary string of successes already behind her, the dressage world is Bella Plumridge’s oyster. CLAUDIA BRODTKE learned more about a young rider whose career has so far been stellar.

Winner of the Sydney 2019 CDI-P and 2021 CD-Lite P, 2021 CDN-P Australian Freestyle Record holder, 2021 FEI Pony Winner at the Victorian Young Rider Youth Championships and the Boneo Classic, and winner of the 2019 Australian Leg of the World Youth Dressage Challenge Championship and Overall World Youth Dressage Challenge Champions (pipping over 60 other riders worldwide to the post in the process), at just 15 years old Bella Plumridge has enjoyed remarkable success – and all on the Arabian Riding Pony she has ridden from elementary to competing at Prix St. Georges and Intermediate I level.

Hailing from Victoria’s Yarra Valley, Bella grew up watching her mum training with Charlotte Pedersen, who has coached Bella since she started riding. Surrounded by dressage horses, Bella was entranced and watched the movements in awe, dreaming of one day riding them herself.

Bella has ridden for as long as she can remember and as soon she was able to ride off the lead, she attended Pony Club and found her favourite disciplines in dressage and show jumping. Her first pony, Lily, a 12.2hh pocket rocket arrived when she was four. A year later and Jerry came along, a four-year-old breaker who was so bombproof that she remembers having to work hard to encourage forward motion!

Currently Bella has four horses in work: FEI Small Tour Arabian Riding Pony Illawong Harvest Moon (bred by Kate Law) has been her partner for five years, and Tres Bonne NZ, a 16hh Warmblood x Thoroughbred x Clydesdale is

Bella’s jumping favourite. Then there’s Snapdragon, a 16.2hh homebred Warmblood breaker out of her mum’s FEI horse, and lastly Blueberry Twist, a blue roan Welsh D bought as a project and since stealing Bella’s heart.

Aiming to work with each horse four times a week can be a challenge when you’re trying to balance getting up at 5:30am to clean out stables, school, and riding one or two horses every night! But Bella’s love of dressage helps to motivate her through some very long days. She says that the appeal of dressage is everything: “It’s all about the time you put in behind the scenes training and making a connection with your horse, and that you can always improve and aim to do things better in competitions where every mark counts.”

Bella’s been a member of the Victorian Young Rider Squad since she was ten. On their A Squad for the past two years, she says it's been "an amazing experience." As a squad member, she’s been expertly mentored while having the opportunity to develop her riding, theoretical knowledge, and fitness, as well as enjoying support from close friends who are there for each other through the ups and downs of what can be an exacting sport.

As well as continuing to develop her current team, Bella would also like to ride and train other horses with a dream of one day representing Australia at either the Olympics or WEG. But ever practical, she’s planning to study psychology at university, a career she says she will enjoy, and one that would help finance her equestrian dreams.

Success such as Bella’s doesn’t come without support, and her ‘thank you’ list includes her parents, especially her mum; her coach Charlotte Pedersen; Jan Smith and the Victorian Young Rider Squad; her school Yarra Valley Grammar; vets The Equine Practice; farrier Brook Dobbin; and her sponsors Horse in the Box Equestrian, Hoogies of Seville and Epona Elite Equestrian.

And from all of us here at the Equestrian Hub, keep shooting for the stars, Bella – we’re excited to see what comes next.

Bella and Illawong Harvest Moon were Small Tour champions at the 2021 Boneo Park Inter 1 (Image by One Eyed Frog Photography).