Amateur event rider ‘brings home the bacon’ for 81-year-old owner with CCI1* completion

An amateur event rider has spoken of her joy at completing her first CCI1* – and “bringing home the bacon” for her horse’s elderly owner, who has been experiencing poor health.

Doncaster-based Katie Stephenson was second in the CCI1* (section F) at Offchurch Bury on 2 July with David and Maggie McGonigal’s 11-year-old Sannabays Inferno. The section was won by Lorna Riley and Vienna Ask.

Driving instructor Katie, who also works a second job in a car dealership, started riding for 81-year-old former eventer David four years ago when one of his work riders left.

“David enjoys getting horses from Ireland to produce, and the opportunity came up to ride ‘Nero’. It was exciting but also daunting because of David’s competition experience and knowing he’d ridden at Badminton and represented Great Britain abroad,” said Katie.

“Originally the plan had been to sell Nero but he needed a bit more time to finish developing so David kept him for me to try to do a bit more with him. He’d been backed but done very little and we just seemed to click.”

Katie, who is trained by David, with additional lessons from Megson Eventing, said there were “hiccups” along the way and she was eliminated during the cross-country at her first event with Nero, a BE90 in March 2019.

“After that we really put the effort into more training and taking Nero out as much as we could. At our next event three months later we went clear in the cross-country and came 12th,” said Katie.

“We’ve been at BE100 level for quite a while now, and we’ve done a couple of BE105s. I really wanted to move up to novice last year but I struggle with confidence in showjumping, and when we tried our first novice in August I ended up retiring.”

Katie said this year she was determined to do a CCI*, but more so for David, who has had health issues.

“David has always come to events with me and walks the course; he has a heck of a lot of years of knowledge and he likes to help me go out and enjoy it. Before I go out he always says, ‘As long as you come back and you’ve got a smile on your face, and you’ve both learned something, that’s the main thing’,” said Katie.

“This year because of his health he hasn’t been able to come to all the events, but he did make it to Offchurch. Although he wasn’t able to walk the course I told him all about it and we talked through how I was going to ride it.”

Katie and Nero scored 31.9 in the dressage, had four faults showjumping, and produced a clear inside the time in the cross-country for second place. She described the result as a “real confidence boost”.

“My confidence can sometimes hold me back and I didn’t want to do a one-star and embarrass myself. David was waiting at the end of the cross-country when I finished and said ‘I knew you could do it!’,” she said.

“I’m immensely proud we pulled it out of the bag. It‘s a team effort – we all go together, David and Maggie when they can, my friends Charlotte and Jody who are based at David’s, and we all enjoy it, even when things don’t go to plan. We’re not professionals, we’re just here having a go at it. Everyone put so much effort into helping me get there and it was nice to actually bring home the bacon.

“It’s just so lovely to do it for David; he absolutely loves eventing and has a lot of faith in me and Nero. He’s absolutely over the moon and for the next couple of days he kept saying ‘That really really was a good result, you know!’. I think we are now going to try and build on what we’ve done and try a novice again in a few weeks’ time.”

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