Horses and riders will be put to the test in both individual and team events during the 2016 Estevan Saskatchewan Summer Games equestrian competition.
Eight districts will participate in the July 27-30 equestrian event with each of the district teams consisting of eight male or female members 19 years of age and under competing in no more that one position on the team. This means that one athlete, human or horse, may not compete in the barrel racing competition and the western reining event or as an athlete in the jumping sport and in the dressage competition.
Point accumulations by these athletes will determine their final standings in both the individual and team events. The individual events will run at the Estevan Exhibition Grounds on July 28 and 29 at the rodeo ring for the jumping and barrel racing competitions and at the show ring for the dressage and reigning challenges, while the team events in the four disciplines will take place on July 30.
Krissy Fiddler, executive director of the Saskatchewan Horse Federation, said the jumping event consists of two rounds with an athlete having to clear the first round by not getting any faults or dropping a rail to make it to the jump off, which is a timed competition where participants are judged on speed as well as faults. She said the barrel racing sport is also based on speed and faults meaning if an athlete drops a barrel they’re out of the medal rounds.
“It’s definitely a crowd pleaser,” said Fiddler about the barrel racing event. “They have to turn and burn to try and get those times to beat the remainder of the athletes.”
Brenda Noble, local sport representative with the Saskatchewan Summer Games, said the dressage competition involves the athletes completing a pattern. She said riders are dressed in English attire and compete in an arena marked with letters where they will be given a course that they have to put the horse through in an allotted time, such as a trot from point A to B or a lope from point C to D.
Noble said the western reining event again gives an athlete a pattern to complete such as the figure eight. She said that includes flying change of lead in the middle of the arena before coming down the sides of the ring 10 feet from the wall and doing a roll back where the horse would spin around on its hind haunches and come back in the other direction.
“Also in that discipline you would (do) spins, so you would probably do four spins and again your horse would stay on its haunches and its front legs would push itself around in a circle really fast,” said Noble. “It would do both directions and then another part of the reigning is the stop. It’s called a sliding stop and the horse just slides down the side of the arena or in the middle of the arena, whatever the pattern suggests, and it pulls itself with its front legs.”
Fiddler said the equestrian competition is the only sport at the Games that will have a full compliment of participants. She said these athletes are the youth who will eventually go on to compete in the World Equestrian Games as members of Team Saskatchewan.
“Many athletes who did the Summer Games in the past, a lot of them live in Europe now. Our top trainers and top competitors who (have competed) make their living out of being trainers and coaches, so these kids are the elite of equestrian. Even though some of them may be young, they are the ones who are going to be the future of equestrian.”
