• Summary

It was with this in mind that I had a chat with troton member and para equestrian Andrea Evans a.k.a Limo who recently won the Freestyle To Music Class 1b at the RDA National Championships.

It seems I had hit on a subject that she is pretty passionate about. Andrea has been riding since the age of five but at seventeen a horse riding accident left her with spinal injuries that went from bad to worse and eventually put her in a wheelchair. That's when she started to ride with the RDA.

"Yes, the RDA definitely needs bringing into the modern world. From my experience they need to have closer links as an organisation and to start exporting ideas from abroad. Other countries are definitely ahead of the game when it comes to catering for para equestrians."

One of the areas Andrea had to research herself was specialised equipment. Luckily my trainer is very pro-active and came up with alterations to my tack to help me with my riding. Her latest brilliant idea was to use a poll guard as a template for knee rolls. But I'm just about to get a new saddle,which is great as my current one looks like Frankensteins Monster now!

And simply choosing a non-conventional saddle isn't always welcomed by the RDA. "They can be very set in their ways and not keen on change. I'm fortunate that there's a new team at my local centre who have let me get a treeless saddle which because it's so flat really helps me sit more evenly. The old school wouldn't have tolerated that."

When she hit a brick wall with the RDA and found top British para equestrians less than willing to divulge their secrets Andrea found the internet her best source of information. "The Americans and the Australians were the most helpful. They also have some of the best equipment but of course the shipping is really expensive and you can't try things out. I would love to see stockists over here. And I have suggested to the RDA that they start an equipment database."

Being keen on jumping myself I asked Andrea about para show jumping and whether she did any. What she said really surprised me as having seen youtube videos of this discipline I assumed it was popular in the UK. "Actually, I jumped for the first time on Bruno a couple of weeks ago. My instructor let me as she is up for new things and likes to push the boundaries. The Bristish Para Show Jumping Association (BPSJA) was only set up in the last couple of years and since then they've only held one competition in this country. In France and Germany para's have been competing in jumping for over ten years and that includes cross-country!"

The RDA has been against physically disabled people jumping in the past "because it was dangerous." However they have recently announced that they will be working closely with British Show Jumping to introduce a training pathway for coaches which by 2011 should become integrated into the RDA who propose to hold more show jumping competitions and demos.

So, on paper this seems like a step in the right direction but for someone who rides at the RDA Andrea says the fact is there is little chance of competing even in dressage. "I get to compete in competitions when my local RDA centre holds one and I also compete against able bodied riders when it gets hired out. But getting out and about isn't so easy. We have a regional horsebox but that only gets used for RDA qualifiers and championships. The rest of the time it sits around doing nothing. This is partly because two to three members of staff are needed per rider and my horse Bruno who is at the end of the day a riding school horse is obliged to fulfil his other duties."

On top of that no one else is allowed to take Andrea to a show because of insurance. And she says "There's a big jump from the RDA to "Para Equestrian" competition without much in-between and to get support is really difficult. There is an RDA centre, South Bucks, who really push and promote their disabled riders. They have had two horses on loan from the Para Dressage Training Trust (PDTT) and also have horses loaned to them for competing as well. Plus some of the staff are letting disabled riders use their horses. These are things I'd like to see more of nationwide. The RDA could perhaps co-ordinate a regional/area event more regularly, say three times a year, pool transport and volunteer resources, and work with owners and see about apprenticing riders to them or loaning competition horses. They also need to work on the insurance angle as quite a lot of people are happy to share transport costs. Riders could be more proactive in starting rider groups alongside their RDA groups, as long as the RDA will allow it, a problem I'm afraid I have faced, as we could raise our own funds etc."

So Andrea counts herself lucky to have found a good instructor and a good horse in Bruno with whom she shares a special bond, but worries that this isn't freely available to everyone. Not all instructors are as good as hers and she says "The RDA centres definitely need to pull together more. It's ridiculous that some don't have enough horses whereas others are turning horses away! I've suggested that they have an online swap shop for horses."

Well hopefully the RDA will start to move with the times and listen to what it's members like Andrea have to say. And because Andrea has struggled so much to find information to help her progress with her riding she is keen to share what she knows with others. So follow the links in this post to articles she has written on her website and I'm sure 'Limo" will be up for answering any questions in the troton riding for the disabled group too.