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These two girls ride high in the saddle

Posted on September 30, 2011

By ALAN ERSKINE

WHEN Sunraysia teenagers Paige Jardine and Lucy Boseley saddle up their mounts to compete in this year’s National Equestrian Inter-school Championships, it will be a case of the best of Victoria taking on the best of South Australia.

Lucy and Paige with Lucy’s training partner, ‘Ollie.’

Paige, 17, is Captain of the Victorian team, while Lucy, 15, gained a last-minute ride with the SA team as a ‘reserve’ entry after one of the team had to pull out of the side.

It gets a bit complicated trying to explain how these good friends and former Mildura Pony Club team-mates are suddenly riding for different states, but Lucy says the short story is that it was easier for her, for insurance purposes, to register with the closest State body, and that was South Australia.

Both girls are confident, but certainly not cocky, kids. They seem to have their feet planted firmly on the ground (when they’re not in the saddle), both are aiming at the highest possible level in equestrian circles and will give it their best shot, but won’t be devastated if their dreams don’t eventuate.

Paige and Lucy are students at Mildura Senior College and Merbein P-10 respectively, and know the value of education, but admit to spending every minute they can with their horses, Lucy at least two hours a day five days a week, and Paige every day.

And not all that time is spent in the saddle. There’s all the preparation work, feeding, grooming, mucking out the yards, saddling up and pre-event exercising and training, and then doing everything in reverse as a warm-down. And both girls love every minute of it.

Paige summed it up best, borrowing a well-known saying; “Find something you love doing, and you’ll never have to work a day of your life.”

Lucy has had seven horses since she started riding at the tender age of three, has three at the moment, and her favourite is Monty, a six-year-old chestnut thoroughbred, although she does all her competition work on the more experienced Ollie, the black 17-year-old.

Paige has a soft spot for 21-year-old Terrific, bit does most of her competition on her seven-year-old purpose-bred Hendrix.

Paige said she had learned a lot from Terrific, and in return had been able to pass on what she had learned in the training of her younger horses.

The girls concentrate on different disciplines. Eventing is Lucy’s favoured equestrian competition, requiring expertise in a combination of show jumping, dressage and cross-country. Although she won’t be going head to head with Paige in that event, with Paige concentrating on show-jumping, Lucy says there will still be fierce, but friendly rivalry, between the pair.

Paige agrees, and says the sport is almost unique in that a lot of the competitors are friends. “The competition can be intense, but there’s no bitchiness or nastiness among competitors,” she said.

Both girls are fortunate to have extremely supportive parents who are prepared to drive them around the State, or interstate, sometimes covering thousands of kilometres in a weekend. Apart from Mildura, there are regular competitions in Balranald, Nyah, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sale, to name a few.

Both girls are refreshingly modest about their riding success so far, but both are high achievers. Lucy admits to many placings in eventing at varying levels of competition, and finished 8th in the State Pony Club championship earlier this year, a result that has seen her jump into the Grade One Pony Club competition. Lucy says she and Ollie are the best of friends, even soul mates with great trust in each other, and hopes the pair can continue to rise through the ranks, perhaps even to international level. She has high praise for her coaches Carol Baumann, Bec Gowers and Megan Jones, who was an Olympic Silver Medallist in Beijing.

Paige’s coach for the past four years has been Jamie Coman, who was a member of the Australian show-jumping team for the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Paige’s path through to the inter-school nationals was by winning the Victorian show-jumping championship in July, a performance that saw her elected team captain.

Among her notable achievements so far are being in the State team that won the National show-jumping championship, and being named Equestrian Victoria’s Young Ambassador of the Year.

Paige has been a member of the Victorian Young Rider State Show-jumping squad since 2009, and recently had several placings when teaming with Hendrix and Terrific at the Royal Adelaide Show.

Both girls say they are looking forward immensely to representing their states at the national championships, to be held from October 4-7 at the Werribee Park National Equestrian Centre, and two weeks later will be in action back home for the annual Mildura Show.

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