A top rider’s journey back to the highest level after major injury, and other things the horse world is talking about
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“It was like learning to ride all over again”
Five-star event rider Bubby Upton has recalled her first experiences of being back on a horse after her major back surgery following a serious accident in August last year, which could have left her unable to walk. While chatting to H&H’s podcast host Pippa Roome, Bubby said: “I guess I had come to terms with the fact that I might never do the level of riding that I used to do. But for me, I had accepted that just being back on a horse in whatever capacity was enough for me.” Then after the excitement of being given the all-clear to get back in the saddle from her surgeon, Bubby admitted it was only when she did get back on, that the reality sank in of how far she still had to go. “If I’m being honest, reflecting back on it, it was incredibly demoralising – having been at the level that I was, and then being a complete shell of myself,” she said. “It was hard, hardish, to remain positive, but I just did.”
A clever new trakehner design
One of the frangible trakehner fences that will be used at Osberton International Horse Trials in 2024.
Riders competing in the two-star and three-star classes at Aspen Cooling Osberton International Horse Trials this week (3–6 October) will be the first in Britain to jump a new deformable trakehner fence. Osberton cross-country course-designer and event director Stuart Buntine is among a team of people in the sport that has been working with Swedish inventor Mats Bjornetun, who is behind the MIM safety clip system used on many eventing cross-country fences. The log sits on a deformable structure, designed by Mr Bjornetun, which is the same kind as the device used in frangible tables, designed to collapse forwards and down if hit with force, with the overall aim to prevent a horse from falling.
Find out more about this new fence design
The Jinny books are back in print!
Readers of a certain age will be delighted to hear that Patricia Leitch’s classic series, featuring Jinny and her beautiful chestnut Arab mare Shantih, are going to be available to a new generation. The first six Jinny titles are out, as ebooks and in paperbacks with new covers. Two more are to be released this year and the remaining four will follow next year. Publisher Jane Badger, of Jane Badger Books, said: “Patricia Leitch is an amazing author. In the Jinny books she has so much to say about what it means to own something, and about letting go. She really was a trailblazer.”
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