Last Thursday I went to the British Racing School in Newmarket to do the Level
One Pony Racing Training. Once we had arrived we were given a briefing on how to
get the correct position; where your feet should be in the stirrups, the angle
of your legs, the position of your hands etc. After this we were taken to the
simulators where we learnt how to keep our position whilst the horses are moving
(there were mirrors on the side so we could watch ourselves) and we went through
three paces, trot, canter and gallop. We also learnt how to hold the reins with
double bridges and how to change hands by using reins attached to the walls and
by standing on things that made us wobble about. The instructor told us that one
of their top jockey's has such good balance that he can go into his racing
position stood on the top of the fencing and not even wobble! By this time most
of the classes legs were aching and so we moved onto the ponies which our
parents had tacked up and brought round to the indoor school. I found that
riding real ponies was a lot easier than the mechanical horses, although
changing hands proved a little more difficult. We practised trotting round in
the racing position to start off with and then progressed to canter, which Fabio
enjoyed a little too much and we ended up going round the school a little too
fast! We were filmed whilst riding and after we had handed the ponies back over
to our parents we went into one of the classrooms where we watched ourselves so
we could see what areas we needed to improve in. I had a great day and will
hopefully will go back to do more of the training days before I get too old for
it.
Monet Johnson
