Chairmans Report Jan 2009

Fri, 16 January 2009

Happy New Year and I hope you and your families have had a great Christmas.

2009 promises to be a great year for the riding club – we have some fabulous new trainers on board, lots of schooling sessions booked, the committee are reviewing the competitions we hold and re-vamping the formats, and luckily, we have a brilliant group of members.

For those that have not met me before, I have been a member of TVRC for 6 years and over those years, together with my fabulous mare Sparkle, have learnt to ride ‘properly’. I moved down to Maidenhead with Sparks from Birmingham and immediately fell in love with the greens and woods around Pinkneys Green. It took Sparks a while to get her head around all the open spaces after hacking along mostly busy roads during her formative years. We soon joined the riding club as I could not afford private lessons but wanted to get more out of Sparks than just careering round the greens and outdoor school at our livery yard. We started with the poles to 2”3 and pre, pre prelim flatwork and over time have slowly improved and built a strong relationship.

I have always enjoyed the competing side of the club and so took over the management of the teams 3 years ago. It is brilliant when your team qualifies or goes well but also when someone manages their first clear round or over 60% score. It is also testament to the club that when it also goes horribly wrong no-one is bitchy or unkind. Sparks and I have competed on most teams and have had the pleasure of competing at Hickstead, Blenheim and Lincoln and also the shame of being eliminated at the first fence at the qualifiers.

I joined the committee 2 years ago and was amazed at the amount of work there was to be done behind the scenes to ensure that the club ran smoothly. Dilys has been a great Chairman for the last couple of years and I have learnt a lot from her during my ‘apprenticeship’.  We are looking to build on the excellent work that previous committees have put in place and ensure that TVRC continues to be one of the friendliest and active clubs in the area.

So far all the competitions we have run have been well supported with great feedback both from members and non-members. Both the show jumping competitions in October and December had full classes and it was great to see a good number of members competing – and doing well. The dressage after Christmas also saw an excellent level of entries and everyone I spoke to enjoyed the day. We also need to thank the organisers of these competitions as a tremendous amount of work is needed before the event to ensure all goes to plan.

There is a lot coming up in the next few months – take a look at the calendar on the website – please let the team managers know if you would like to take part in the area qualifiers and get your entries in for the next dressage competition and the winter woollies showing show.

Good luck with your horses for 2009 – make the most of them if they are fit and well and stay patient and strong if they are currently not.  I hope to see you all in 2009 either competing, helping or schooling and please contact me if there is something you would like the club to do or you can volunteer to do.

Lucy Savage, January 2009