Sports Ponies

by Hannah Owen

I’ll take bets that a lot of you will read the title and think to yourself “Sports ponies? What on earth….?”’. Well, you aren’t alone! I must admit when I was first told about the idea and the studbook, I was sceptical, but a chance meeting with a stranger at Moorgreen Show led me to research a little further.

August 2006 arrived and I was wondering what on earth I was going to do with my 13.1h jumping/all round pony. I was set to take up a university place over an hour away in September 2006, and I had Holly to think about: my best friend in the world, a too-sharp-for-her-own-good little mare, but she would never not take up any challenge I gave her. My dad, John, had always desperately wanted a foal from Holly, but I always held back, not wanting to create more unpapered and unregistered foals.

After my chance meeting at Moorgreen, I looked up the Sports Pony Studbook Society website, and gave the secretary/studbook manager, Sarah Stegall, a phone call. We had a long chat, and I discovered the SPSS register mares of unknown breeding after grading them in a performance based setting. So, we blindly entered, with our only idea about what was going to happen gained from the information sheets on the SPSS website. This, however, gave us only about 5 weeks to teach Holly to loose jump - an unknown concept to us and to Holly, who at this point was 14 years old. We also entered her for the ridden evaluation, just in case it all went wrong!

The day of reckoning dawned, and I think that to say we were nervous would be quite an understatement!! We preened and polished Holly to within an inch of her life, and set off into the unknown…..

We went with the idea that her just passing and being awarded the lowest award would still be an achievement as we were all total novices. To our utter amazement, she achieved a Head Studbook score, although she has had to be registered in the Preliminary Studbook owing to her lack of known breeding. Not only did she achieve that, she also got the highest temperament mark of the day, and I believe the highest loose jumping mark of the day, at 18/20 and 9/10 respectively.

The next step was stallion searching, and wow, that was fun! In the end, we settled on Laban, and embarked on our next steep learning curve. Thankfully, this went smoothly and Holly caught in foal first time with natural covering. We then spent the next 352 days waiting for the arrival of our little bundle. And what a little bundle she was!! She was so tiny that when the weather turned cold when she was 3 weeks old, she wore a Weatherbeeta dog coat rather than a foal rug!

At this point, she could have been green with pink spots and we wouldn’t have cared. Besotted would have been an apt word to describe our feelings towards her. As we all know, love is completely blind, and we thought this little bundle was fantastic, and named her Callie to her friends, and christened her Cherryhills Arctic Kiss - the first to bear our prefix, which we were thrilled to register and use. As you can imagine, this story is one of lots of ‘firsts’, each one duly celebrated!!

Next we had to decide what to do with Callie, and came to the conclusion that we wanted her independently evaluated to give us an unbiased perspective of her. Thus, our entry to the British Breeding Futurity Young Horse Evaluations was made. Before the Futurity came round, I decided we needed a ‘Practice Party’ and off we went to Ashby de la Zouch Agricultural Show. Blow me down, Callie was awarded the best filly rosette in our class, and no…she wasn’t the only one! This set us up for the Futurity, as she had been to a party, she had travelled well, stood to be preened, and behaved perfectly all day.

So, on to the Futurity! We chose to go to Arena UK, as this was a local venue, we knew the route well, and liked the arenas, so it would give us a less stressful day. I spent hours of the previous day making sure both girls were bathed, trimmed, polished and generally ready and raring to go! They both loaded well, travelled beautifully, and arrived chilled and shiny. At least if we didn’t win any ribbons, I wanted to be noticed for my shiny horses - just a small obsession of mine!

I felt sick waiting to go forward to the vet evaluation, and Callie picked up on it by digging holes then rearing, so I gave myself a mental kicking and got on with it. The vet was complimentary and she was a very good little pony. Holly spent her time posing and looking beautiful.

Into the evaluators, and back came the sick feeling, but thankfully that passed once we got going. Callie demonstrated what a show off she was going to become, by pinging round the huge arena - it is especially huge when you aren’t even 10h high!

To cut a long story short, she was awarded a First Premium, and was awarded some beautiful rosettes for being the highest scoring Sports Pony filly foal. Let’s just say, the champagne was cracked open that night! After the event, I kept an eye on the overall scores from the whole country and was amazed to see Callie ultimately ranked fourth in her section which was Sport Pony Fillies, born before 1st May 2008. I was even more amazed to realise that this qualified us for the Elite Final at Addington Manor.

A few hiccups led up to our trip to Addington, not least the car snapping a drive shaft the day before! We went, expecting nothing, and just wanting to enjoy the experience, which we did, and brought home some beautiful finalist rosettes.

Did I think that our year could get any better? Not really, if I’m honest, but it did! A phone call from Sarah Stegall at SPSS informed me that Callie had been awarded a Certificate of Excellence from the SPSS, and an invite to show her off at the SPSS Mare & Youngstock show. The same day, Callie was awarded a First Premium from the SPSS.

We went into winter, petrified our perfect little foal would turn ugly and never be beautiful again. Yet again, we were proven wrong! She came out of winter, and blossomed into a lovely yearling. Again we decided to have her evaluated at the Futurity, where she AGAIN came home with the highest scoring rosettes in her section, this time against all yearling Sport Ponies, both colts and fillies. As a yearling she was ranked 6th nationally.

So, for first time breeders, we have had a fantastic trip, and ended up with a lovely, friendly animal, who is a pleasure to have around, whether she be a world beater or not.