Nesbitt rider wins national dressage competition at Arabian horse show in Brandon
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/08/2017 (3047 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Terry McKenzie of Nesbitt has claimed her biggest accomplishment to date in dressage — winning a national amateur competition.
“It’s still sinking in,” she said on Thursday, the day after she was awarded top honours in her class at the Canadian National Arabian & Half-Arabian Championship Horse Show at the Keystone Centre.
In a competition with more than 30 participants from Canada and the United States, McKenzie surprised even herself with a first-place showing in her class. She earned a score of 70.682, higher than the mid-60s score she was anticipating.
She’s impressed to be winning national-level competitions with HV Excalibur’s Guardian, an eight-year-old Arabian draft cross she only started riding last year.
“Being an amateur and all, bringing a horse along to this level in this short a period of time is good. It takes a while to train a horse,” she explained.
Dressage is a choreographed routine played out in an arena. Over usually six to seven minutes, a trained horse executes a series of movements, each scored individually by judges.
At the training level, which McKenzie competed in, the manouevres are less complex than higher categories, as horses develop the skills, training and musculature to one day perform advance movements.
Tests in the training level include a walk, trot and a faster trot, the latter defined as a canter. In one of the other movement, riders are asked to lengthen their reins so the horse stretches its neck downward.
McKenzie, who is president of Westman Dressage, has been competing for 15 years and the last three years on the national stage in Brandon.
She knows Arabian horses well. The farm she grew up on, Hedgeville Farm in Nesbitt, has been taking care of the breed for 40 years, she said. She and her husband have a farm a few miles away.
At nationals, McKenzie recorded a pair of top 10 finishes last year and was hoping to at least match that level of success this year. She has already cracked the top 10 list on three occasions this year, including her victory on Wednesday evening.
In total, she will participate in four dressage competitions and two hunter over fence competitions this week.
McKenzie credits a lot of training with her surprise first-place showing.
“It’s like any other sport in the fact that it takes a lot of practice to improve and move forward with it.”
On top of her work around the farm and the time she spends training riding horses, McKenzie works at Rocky Mountain Equipment, a Case IH dealer in Brandon. She also serves as a director with the Provincial Exhibition of Manitoba.
The Canadian National Arabian and Half-Arabian Championship Horse Show, now in its seventh year in Brandon, runs until Saturday. More than 700 horses have been registered for the weeklong event.
» ifroese@brandonsun.com
» Twitter: @ianfroese