Sarchen Gainsford and Alison Knight took part in the recent South African Pony Riders Championships at the George Riding Club.
Sarchen Gainsford and Alison Knight took part in the recent South African Pony Riders Championships at the George Riding Club.
Gainsford is a pupil at DSG and was selected as part of the Eastern Province team for the showing champs, while Knight, a Kingswood College pupil, took part in the Novice Equitation in a different category to Gainsford.
In the Working Hunter event Gainsford finished third out of 25 participants in her pool, while in the Novice Equitation event she took fourth spot out of 21, while the East Cape novice team took third place overall. Alison Knight took eighth place in the 80cm jumping championships and in the Novice Equitation event.
All five regions which fall under the South African National Equestrian Federation took part in the national event, with over 200 children taking part.Kerry Longhurst, owner of Assegai Stud, where the two girls train, said the championships went well for both Gainsford and Knight and they “performed well,” in what was the first SA champs for both girls.
While many of the children who took part in the champs compete in riding as their only sport, the two local girls also take part in various other sports at their schools. This was Sarchen and her pony Assegaai Solero’s first SA champs, and they are proving to be a winning combination.
At the recent Phoenix Roller Mills Settler Show they won the Show Hunter Pony, finished second in Show Riding Pony, third in the Working Hunter Pony and scooped the overall Reserve Show Pony Championship.
Knight took part in the champs after having built up a relationship with her new pony Retina-R some six weeks before the champs. While this was Knight’s first SA champs Retina has turned out as being a little champion.
Both Gainsford and Knight thanked Kerry Longhurst, owner of Assegai Stud, for her “support and patience and for believing in us and when we fall, which happens all too often, for picking us up.”
