ABOUT ANNA
I’m a 18 year old International Young Rider. I started riding when I was 2 on my families little Dartmoor pony. At the age of 6 I wanted to expand my knowledge and discover all the different aspects of the sport, so I joined the Wilton Hunt Pony Club. During my time as a member I competed in all disciplines but my love lay with eventing. When I was 13 my team unexpectedly qualified for the Pony Club Dressage National Championships which resulted in me getting the ‘dressage bug’.
Over the following 2 years I trained my retired eventer until he was competing at Elementary and training Medium. I evented until June 2014 on another but I soon realised my love lay with Dressage. In May 2014 we bought my current dressage horse Gleavo aka Aquiro. From that point forward I discovered the true magic of dressage.
Gleavo was an 11 year old KWPN, who had trained to Advanced Medium but only been lightly competed to Medium. In September that year we went to the GB Junior Squad selection day thinking it would just be a good experience for us both and to our shock we were selected for the Promising Squad. For us that is where it all started. We had our goals set but Gleavo exceeded our expectations in a shorter timescale than we believed possible. In February 2015 we became the South West Medium Restricted Champions. We went on to be selected for our first International in March and competed in our first National Championship in April.
We secured many wins locally, and became the BYRDS South West Inter-County A Squad Champion, the BYRDS FEI Home International Champion, the U25 FEI Junior National Champion and the U25 FEI Junior Freestyle National Champion. We had our PSG debut at the Bury Farm High Profile show in December 2015, just over a year after we had made our Advanced Medium debut.
In 2016 we competed successfully at this level at Premier Leagues around the country which includes winning one of the PSG classes at Wellington Premier League, qualifying us directly for the 2016 Le Mieux National Dressage Championships after only competing 5 PSG tests. Having won a training voucher at Wellington PL we took the opportunity to train with Anna Ross for the weekend prior to our Inter 1 debut where we achieved the winning score of +71% and we have never looked back........
In October we were selected for the GB Young Rider Progress Squad 2016-17.We made the transition a year early as at just 18 I am still eligible to compete as a Junior for another year . All this and we had only ridden 6 PSG's competitively.
Following regular training sessions with Anna R over the winter she offered us the opportunity to accompany her team on their annual trip to the Spanish Sunshine Tour. This was a dream come true. Over the duration of the competitions we learnt a huge amount and achieved good placings. On returning from Spain I started working as a rider/groom for Anna ,this in turn has led to a great number of opportunities and experiences . I have also been selected for several International Competitions to represent GB as a Young Rider, which led me to be long-listed for selection for the 2017 European Championships. By August 2017 we had successfully completed two competitive Grand Prixs
