AASE competition winners update
We caught up with some of our AASE competition winners to find out more about them and how they got on with their lessons with an AASE coach of their choice!
Ella Bubb
Our overall winner was Ella Bubb; an 18 year old young event rider based in West Sussex. Having finished school she is now looking to set up professionally and is very excited about starting up her own yard and developing her business. She feels very lucky to have a small string of four horses. Happiness ld, my top horse, is a very exciting eight year old whom I have competed up to FEI 2* and I am hoping to trial for young rider teams, before hopefully seeing how far we can go in the eventing world. Hardy iii, is an 8 year old mare who is currently at novice and Greenlough Maggie is another exciting young horse who I am hoping to produce up the levels. Stirred not Shaken was my first horse who I evented up to novice and we now have fun showjumping up to newcomers.
She chose a lesson with Corinne Bracken which she has completed and a lesson with Charlie Hutton in September.
Ella said “I really enjoyed my lesson with Corinne and learnt loads. My horse Happy is very extravagant and still quite green so we can struggle with maintaining balance and stride length round a track as his canter can get away from me a little. We worked on jumping out of a shorter, punchier canter which was easier to maintain round a course and we were definitely challenged with some technical lines and tighter turns. These were very beneficial as they got both me and Happy thinking quicker and concentrating on regaining balance and the correct stride length after the fences. I felt I gained lots of useful tools, resulting in a much more fluent showjumping round at our next event at Aston le Walls.”
Alexa Palmer
One of our runners-up was Alexa Palmer; a 21 year old who has just graduated from the University of Exeter studying Business Economics and is now looking forward to having more time to pursue her equestrian ambitions based at home from her yard at Greenhays Stud. Last year her 7 year old mare Super Nova excelled in all three disciplines. They were champions at the British Dressage Youth Inter-County, and reserve champions at the Inter-Regional and Home International. Completing their 2019 event season with 3rd at the young national championship was the ‘icing on the cake’ for a year where they jumped double clear on every outing and did not finish outside of the top ten.
She chose a lesson with Targa Hammond.
Alexa said “I had a fantastic time with Targa. I found it very interesting talking about my Super Nova’s breeding (Numero Uno) and how she has inherited huge talent, but I need to address several things in her way of going that many other horses with similar breeding find difficult. Having finished 3rd at the 6 year old national eventing championship last year, and jumped double clear at every event last year, finishing 1st or 2nd eight consecutive times, I found it very exciting that we have the opportunity to make things even better!”
Looking into the future, Alexa aims to continue working with Targa and produce her young horses to age classes and beyond. She hopes to have the horse power and knowledge to compete at top level and help other people make the most of their horse’s ability.
Thanks to both Ella and Alexa for sharing their lesson experiences!
More to follow on our winner Ella’s lesson with Charlie and our runners-up Holly Hale and Melissa Dawe and their lessons with Charlie, coming in September!