After coming to Rice, I had an unbelievable experience of somebody tapping me on the shoulder and asking, ‘Hey, you are the horse girl, right?’ As a rider introducing myself and my interests to a new group of people, I often get asked, ‘So, what is it like being a show jumper?’
Imagine sitting on the back of a conscious animal galloping towards a colorful obstacle, feeling the morning breeze against your face as well as people’s gaze. In a few seconds, the clock will start, and then you will land and turn to the next jump right away. If you fall off, you lose; if the horse refuses, you lose; if you hesitate, you lose.
Seeing confused faces after explaining, I realized people should have asked another question first to make things easier: What is show jumping?
Show jumping classes are held over a course of show jumping obstacles, including verticals, spreads, liverpool, double, and triple combinations, with many turns and changes of direction. The intent is to jump cleanly over a set course within an allotted time. In my words, you have to jump over scary fences in the right order, without knocking anything down, while galloping for your life to the finish line. However, behind the few minutes on the showground, it takes much more than one can imagine.
A Mental War
For me, the charm of show jumping is my love-hate relationship with fear.
Believe it or not, a 4 feet high oxer feels like the end of life when you look at it on a moving animal, not to mention that you have to jump 13 times. On the showground, your horse might go wild and buck you off; You might forget the course that you just memorized 20 minutes ago; your horse might catch you unprepared and stop at the last jump; you never know. Many people wouldn’t appreciate this mixture of adrenaline, fear, and stress, which is the exact feeling that I managed to coexist with for 9 years as a show jumper. Over time, I try to be unbothered by the mental turbulence by rehearsing the show in my mind over and over until I’m certain of my game plan for every second. The urge to challenge and conquer the instinctual fallback becomes my motivation, as every win would be a victory over fear.
How to train your horse
To this day, many people still hold the false perception that horses will do the work for you in show jumping. I wish it were that easy.
As the height goes up, jumps require absolute precision, which demands hard skills: the perfect eyes for distance, a powerful seat that tells an uncontrollable animal to execute your thoughts accurately. These lead to years of training on the flat, gymnastic jumps, and non-stirrup work that challenges your physical limits every day.
Unlike other sports, show jumping does not only train you as an athlete but also makes you a cold-blooded horse trainer. Growing up on My Little Pony, I once thought my horse was an angel who would carry me through everything willingly. It is definitely not the case. Horses are lazy by nature, just as humans are. You have to use your aids, not limited to whips and spurs, to let the horse know that you are fully in charge to prevent the smart creature from taking advantage of you. You need to actively experiment with what you can do differently to allow your horse to jump comfortably, which is the only way for it to jump higher the next time. The ultimate red flag is refusal, in which case you will have to use everything you’ve got to make that horse jump. As I grow older, I rarely pat my horse or give her carrots as girls do in cartoons, for I expect her to be an athlete instead of a pet.
I used to be one of the people who thought all you need to be a show jumper is talent, courage, and a good horse. At the age of 13, across the finish line of the World Cup, I fell hard by the VIP area where rows and rows of celebrities and my three best friends were seated, the ones I invited to see my debut as a young show jumper. I knew the amount of training I put in did not match the level I was on. The excitement and rookie’s luck still fueled me even when I reached a height where my seat could not follow the tight turns, or when my eyes failed to locate the point of takeoff from a few strides away. Eventually, the falling off, foolhardiness, self-rationalization, and stubborn attempts revolved in me until I confronted the fact that, instead of an adrenaline rush, equestrianism is about taming the body to prepare for more of the same and making instinctive decisions in a tenth of a second. Over a hundred jumps, I recalibrated my techniques, knowing that precision leads to a new height while recklessness leads to another painful fall. Now, no jump is risky to me.
Fighting the stereotype
Being greeted as a “horse girl” reminds me of the prejudice and lack of respect regarding show jumping as a sport. It is a universal stereotype that equestrianism is a rich people’s sport, and riders are seen as just sitting there to look elegant. What people neglect is that once we get off the horse, the priority is taking care of the horse (showering, picking up manure, wiping faces, picking hooves, etc.). After cleaning tack, the last thing that you get to care about is yourself, who has been drenched in sweat for an hour by now. After seeing my trainer kill a rat in a stall, I believe riders are probably the most versatile athletes I’ve met. Although the tasks are always time-consuming and tedious, “horse girls” never talk about them because these are merely the basic responsibilities of riders.
Without voices from the riders, the stereotype is hard to be corrected. By sharing my own story and observations of other riders in the field, I hope I do not only answer the question but encourage people to view showjumping in a new way and give more credit to riders as real athletes.