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Photo courtesy of Mykaela Briggs
My name is Mykaela Briggs; I’m 19 years old and have been riding for Jellystone Park for two-and-a-half years now. I work four days a week as a Dental Nurse and ride seven days, training with coach Nicole Brown, owner of Jellystone Park. I have been Tasmania’s leading young rider for the past 5 years and am currently competing in Young Rider classes and some small Grand Prix.
Training horses in Tasmania’s winter leaves a lot to be desired. We receive false hope after looking out the window to blue sky and gentle breeze, only to find it’s 6 degrees and that breeze has ice flakes in it! But the freezing days and nights haven’t stopped us from getting our horses ready to head back to Melbourne for the Australian Showjumping Championships in the coming months.
We had our first competition for the season this past weekend held by SJT Kingborough. Despite the severe weather warning, most braved the cold to ride with record entries for this time of year. After arriving at the show we decided to leave the horses on the float for a little while as the weather was quite unfavourable. My lesson of the day was to never trust a quiet float load of horses… upon unloading them I found Colin with his halter off and hood over his eyes, Patrick had managed to reach the padding on the divider and eat it and Gem was standing at the back just looking annoyed with the boys’ immature behaviour! Fortunately they redeemed themselves by being little stars, after not competing since Jan/Feb this year. Starstruck Juliet (Gem) and JP Chivas (Patrick) with double clears in the Open Championship for 1st and 2nd. My young horse JP Cassime (Colin) also jumped some nice rounds for a 3rd in the open 1.10m class.
Mykaela and Colin jumping in the 1.10m Class
Photo courtesy of Mykaela Briggs
Through this blog I hope to be able to give you all a bit of insight into my life here is Tas; follow me on the road to Melbourne with my team and - as always with horses - the ups, downs and moments when you have nothing left to do but laugh and say “that’s horses for you”!
Happy riding,
Mykaela
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