A rider who says she spent a year – and much of the next – falling off a promising four-year-old has shown her tenacity as the pair won their third British Eventing competition.
Enid Grant and Phil Farmer’s Comil Gold Z (Colin), now six, won the BE80(T) at Alnwick Ford on 21 June, adding just 0.8 cross-country time-penalties to their dressage score.
“It may have been BE80 but to me it’s like winning Badminton, for that horse,” Enid told H&H. “He deserves all the credit in the world.”
Enid runs an equestrian centre in Amble, Northumberland, and the Cook & Barker pub, both of which are owned by Phil. Phil also owns a share in Copain Z, with whom Enid finished seventh in the BE100 at Alnwick Ford.
“Phil was adamant I needed another horse so he helped me buy Colin, having seen him in a NexGen four-year-old class,” she said. “I saw him jump one fence and thought ‘I want to buy that one’. But when we drove down to see him, I couldn’t ride him at all. My trainer Les Smith said to get on with it and if I didn’t buy him, he would.”
So Colin went home with Enid, who faced a challenging time as she got to know him.
“I couldn’t ride one side of him,” she said. “I continued to fall off him – it became a running joke at the yard – as he’d spin, drop his shoulder and buck. I said ‘I can’t do this’, and spent a lot of time crying and saying ‘I’m rubbish’. But it was a case of ‘Just give us time’, so I fell off all that year. The following year, I still fell off, but I kept going.”
Enid had continuous encouragement from Les, and from trainer Emma Carmichael, with whom she started showjumping.
“She’d sat on him at four and really liked him so I knew she’d be able to help me,” Enid said. “Many a time I thought Colin was too good for me, but I knew if anyone was going to help me understand him it was Emma, as she has ridden many horses like him herself.”
Enid said the confidence and self-belief her trainers helped her increase were worth everything as she learned to work with Colin’s quirks and build a relationship. This included dropping hacking, as “he finds it far too boring”, and converting one field into a canter track instead, or using the beach nearby for fitness work.
Eventually, they were ready to event, and after a 13th place in the BE80(T) at Warwick Hall, where they had four too-slow time-faults in the showjumping and 2.8 too-fast time-faults across country.
“It was one extreme to the other!” Enid said. “Then we went to Alnwick Ford, our local event, and he was first after dressage and jumped clear. There was one small reminder that I was on Colin as we went from one field to another and he nearly dropped me because the shade of the grass changed but we won. I thought ‘Oh my god, this is the horse I fell off every day’.”
Enid says Colin still has his moments – she did not use her canter track one day this week as there were road works nearby and “I don’t want to fall off on a Monday morning” – so she still has to have her wits about her. But they are due to contest a BE90 at Forgandenny this weekend.
“I just thought I had to get on with it,” she added. “I always said I was keeping him, and I just had to trust my trainers and believe I could do it; I’m more confident now because I trust them.”
Enid hopes Colin’s story might help anyone else struggling with confidence and self-belief owing to a challenging young horse.
“He needed to trust the people around him,” she said, adding that she has changed her routine, to keep Colin living out, as this is what he prefers. “It’s a story for other people not to give up. When times are hard, you’ve just got to keep believing you can do it, find someone you trust on the ground, and don’t put a time limit on results. Don’t put yourself down and think four-year-olds are just for the professionals – you can do it, even if you think you can’t.”
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