Press

Eventing "Young Rider feeling in the pink" ( November 2005)

Scotland’s Sarra Mayberry and Tommy Pink won team gold at the recent Young Rider Europeans. Sarra tells JULIE HARDING about the experience, as well as the difficulties of living so far from the ‘hub’ of eventing.

SARRA Mayberry found out that she was on the British Young Rider team bound for the Europeans in Sweden the day after winning the final trial at Aston-le-Walls. Slightly surprised, Sarra had plenty of time for the news to sink in, for the journey home to Dunblane in Scotland took at least eight hours.

“I realised I was quite pleased and spent most of the journey phoning and texting people,” says the 20-year-old student of psychology who, not surprisingly, describes herself as “laid back”.

Part of the quartet of Phoebe Buckley, Gemma Tattersall and Olivia Haddow who scooped gold against all expectations in Segersjo in August, Sarra had quested for a place on the Young Rider squad with Tommy Pink in 2004. Her exclusion caused controversy in some quarters and prompted a complaint from her father.

“After Burgie [where the pair finished sixth] I was told that my dressage wasn’t championship standard and that I had gone too slow across country. I was also told that there was no point listing me for training as I lived too far north.”

Sarra’s philosophical nature helped her to get over the disappointment, though, plus 12 months later the selection policy changed and she found herself en route to Sweden.

“I had already decided that it wouldn’t bother me if I didn’t get selected. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world and I knew I’d got a horse who could do a three-star CCI [the pair were sixth at the Blair CCI*** last year and ninth in the Under-25 CCI*** at Bramham this spring].

“Tommy was also entered for Badminton this year, but had to be withdrawn on the Monday of the event with a minor skin irritation. I think to run at a four-star at 20 is more of an achievement than being picked for Young Riders.

Sarra and Tommy Pink sailed through the Europeans, winding up in sixth place. Such a result is pretty impressive for a girl born to a family who once boasted little equestrian knowledge. Sarra’s mother, a learning support teacher, had a passing interest in horses in her youth, but her father, an engineer, had had nothing to do with them until Sarra took up riding at the age of four and spent the next nine years pestering her parents to buy her a pony. They have since helped to support her, both financially as well as practically, her father driving her thousands of miles around the UK so that she can compete.

“Dad is good at driving the lorry!”

Sarra was 16 when she contested her first event — Burgle. She had to hitch a lift that time and failed to complete the cross-country with the 15.2hh George The First, the Irish- bred half Thoroughbred half pony who, frustratingly, ran at just five events in three years because he was so often lame.

Tell Tarragon, her next eventer, was an altogether sounder prospect even though the Mayberry family bought him after he had spent a year living in a field in Ireland sidelined through injury.

“I’m not sure whether we were brave or stupid to buy him,” says Sarra of the 15-year-old who has so far completed three two-star CCIs.

Tommy Pink has proved to be as relaxed as his rider, even if he does occasionally blow up in the dressage — as happened at Bramham when, as he was waiting to go into the arena, the loudspeaker erupted into life, leaving him third last after his test.

No such dramas occurred at the Europeans.

“The selectors there were worried when they saw us warming up for the cross- country. They thought we were being too laid back, but that is normal for us,” laughs Sarra.

Like his predecessors, Tommy came from Ireland via William and John Micklem, where he had been contesting horse trials, including a CCI**, with a Junior rider following a previous career as a hurdler.

“He was useless at racing,” says Sarra, who found out after buying the gelding that one of his grandsires is Derby winner Blakeney.

Now that she is too old for Young Riders, Sarra, a member of the Sport Scotland-funded Scottish Equestrian Association Rider Development Group, has set her sights on Badminton 2006 for Tommy. She will need to juggle preparations for that with studying for her final year exams for her degree in psychology. And after all that her plan is to give eventing a go full time and then return to college and do a masters degree.

“Uni has been good, otherwise I may have got bogged down in horses. This way I’ve got something different to do and a degree to fall back on if the horses don’t work out.”

Sarra still lives at home, commuting the hour each way to university every day for lectures and forgoing the party scene for the quiet life. Her sister, by contrast, is a drummer in a band. Presumably in the Mayberry household, Sarra is known as the sensible one.