Island Life Magazine Ltd December 2010/January 2011 | Page 137

the rider

Island Life - December 2010
Photos: Gemma & Sandy taking part in the
FEI Young Riders at Vierzon, France 2010

Gemma riding high
for dressage dream
Balletic, athletic, disciplined. Even
seasoned riders admit to being baffled
by the ability of a horse and rider to
perform dressage. This makes Gemma
Maddocks’ story that much more
remarkable. For here was a good,
all-round rider who stumbled upon
the discipline and has so taken it to
heart that she is now a contender to
represent Great Britain at dressage.
When we last met Gemma (Island
Life Issue 18, Oct/Nov 08), she was 17,
living with her parents, Michael and
Denise at their home in Apse Heath
and had specialised in dressage for
about two years. Under her trainer,
Daryl Smith, she was already cutting
a dash in the sport, having joined the
British Young Riders Dressage Scheme,
an organisation which encourages
no-holds-barred ambition. “Our
ultimate goal is to see you riding for
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your country,” says the organisation’s
website.
Gemma’s own ambition chimes
perfectly with that goal. She is now
in a second year of her professional
dressage apprenticeship under top
international rider, trainer and judge
Judy Harvey, at Judy’s yard in Milton
Keynes, Bucks. With two other girls
she is given up to five lessons a
week, spending the rest of her time
exercising and caring for Judy’s horses,
and preparing for the all-important
competitions.
“At the moment I’m trying to get
on the Young Riders Team for Great
Britain,” Gemma explains. “I’m now
on the Progress Squad, and competed
internationally this year in France
against riders from Italy, Holland,
Germany, Belgium, Spain and France.”
The squads are the pool from which

the teams are picked. The Prime Squad
currently consists of five combinations
of riders and horses, with four in the
Progress Squad. Over the next six
months monthly training sessions will
be held, during which competitors
ride the Prix St George Test (Young
Rider Team Test) and are judged by an
international judge who works with
them to improve their weaker points.
Gemma is feeling particularly buoyed
up, having just achieved a personal best
at Squad training. “It’s important to be
spotted doing well consistently,” she
says. “Judges aren’t looking for fluke
results.”
To put her aims and ambitions into
context, the British team she hopes
one day to be part of consists of four
riders. Just four. When she describes
her love of what she does and the
mechanics of achieving it, the goal
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