Island Life Magazine Ltd October/November 2008 | Page 82

life

EQUESTRIAN - Sponsored by Brickfields and Froghill Tack

Main photo: Gemma riding at Keysoe in Bedfordshire on
Wstensand in the BYRDS Squad A Test. 2008
P83: Gemma riding at Myerscough, Lancashire on
Abbisfields Royal Sovereign. Placed first in the
elementary 48. 2008

Abbisfields Roya
l Sovereign.

Dressage Diva in
the Making
Gemma Maddocks from Apse Heath,
simply doesn't know how good
she is when it comes to getting
a tune out of a dressage horse.
With several championships under
her belt, plus qualifying for the
Nationals, three consecutive times,
17 years old, Gemma has her sights
set on the big time, and a plan in
place to achieve it.
A diminutive 5’2, 17-year old who
devotes all her time and probably that of

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her mother Denise, to riding, training
and competing her two dressage horses,
Gemma is quietly spoken, modest and
calm. All the qualities you need to become
a professional dressage rider. Having left
school last year, Gemma now has time
to ride both her horses six days a week,
but, at the end of this year, she hopes
to leave the Island and train at a top
dressage yard on the mainland. “That
way I will be taught at a high level, have
the opportunity to ride other horses and
compete at the right competitions to
attract the eye of the Junior Young Riders

selection
panel,” she says quietly.
Gemma has followed in the footsteps
of her parents, Denise and Michael, both
of whom have ridden competitively in the
past. Unusually though, instead of being
plonked on an unsuitable hairy pony,
as is often the case with horsey parents,
Gemma was dispatched to her local
riding school when she was seven. Tara,
a 12-year old roan-coloured pony was the
one she fell in love with, rather luckily as
it turned out.

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