North Shropshire Pony Club: Endurance intro

North Shropshire Pony Club: Endurance intro

By Rachael Chapple

Keen to promote the sport and encourage younger riders to give it a go, Rachael organised a successful endurance rally where everyone had a great time. Here’s what happened.

It was awesome to see endurance among six former racehorses showcasing life after racing. Dressage, polo, showing, eventing and show jumping horses all strutted their stuff in the parade ring in front of ITV Racing and Racing TV.

After my daughter Scarlett became the overall Pony Club Endurance Champion in 2021, she wanted to promote the sport she loves and encourage other members to give endurance a go. We ran the idea of organising an Endurance Intro by our Pony Club DC who was only too pleased to give it the go-ahead. I opened up the event to all neighbouring Pony Clubs as I knew it was unlikely we’d get enough participants from only one or two clubs. One of the many great things about endurance is there is a great encouragement to make teams from Areas for Pony and Riding Clubs, so regions can group together. I believe Endurance GB's John Hudson will be delivering more information on getting teams together this year.

Helping hands

Endurance in our area is a little-known sport so stage one was approaching Cheshire and northwestern endurance Groups to see if others would help me run this event. I was delighted by the response. Many were totally prepared to travel miles for the day, with and without their horses, to get this off the ground. We had 15 entries and the 12 who were there were sound and enthusiastic on the day. I had chosen to run the rally similarly to a real ride, we had support from local vets to do the start and finish checks, heart rate and soundness etc. I found a brilliant venue on hardstanding at Fieldfare Farm, Whitchurch who gave us brilliant support (hard standing was needed as it was December) and a 10-mile (17.7 km) route.

A great day all round

I believe it’s hard to understand what endurance is all about from reading or attending a talk about it, so doing an actual ride made it real. We began with a run through endurance basics by Pennie Drummond, then a display of what to do at the vetting was provided. We were lucky enough to have John Black’s super horse ‘Jam’ there with onsite groom, Tamzin Furtado and they gave a perfect demonstration of how to present and behave, talked through by Jane Stewart. Having experienced endurance riders as escorts (one per two children) meant the kids not only got to ride alongside endurance royalty, but they could fire questions at them en route. The escorts sat behind the children to allow them to self-navigate and gain experience of looking for and following markers.

We placed two ‘on course’ crew stations manned by experienced endurance folk. Riders all had an opportunity to get a slosh and offer horses drinks, the kids were to be given Haribos… oops sorry I forgot that part!

Not only did we get support from our Pony Club, Cheshire, and North-west Endurance members we were donated gift bags from Coolstance Equitek so all riders went home with a wonderful goody bag on the day, as well as their PC Endurance Intro and Achievement badges and completion rosettes. We ran the ride part with start/finish times under Endurance Performance Formula so there was extra recognition for the ‘winners’.

The supporters (the parents) all stayed at the venue for this rally and were well fuelled with bacon, sausage or Halloumi butties, tea, coffee and hot chocolate. My wonderful neighbours Pete and Gillian Norton helped fund and run the catering for this event. As we all know, standing in the cold isn’t typically fun but with a hot drink and sandwich, horse folk can chat merrily for hours.

The feedback from all who attended this event was awesome. Even the escort riders who aren’t always child friendly fed back what great company the Pony Club members were. The kids all returned with huge smiles on their faces, the ponies, who were hugely varied, were all fantastic and I hope we have inspired several to give endurance a go this coming season.

What did I learn from running a ride? A lot. Get more help than you think you need, advertise as much as possible, get an extra secretary on the day and, most importantly, keep it fun throughout.