Bristol rider puts university on hold to focus on dressage

YOUNG Bristol rider Sarah Gorvett has delayed taking up her university place to concentrate on getting onto the British under-21 dressage team.

Sarah, 20, of Failand, near Bristol, has just been included on the British Dressage young rider prime squad as a result of her results so far and her involvement in a recent viewing weekend.

Just five riders were put into the 2008-9 squad by selectors, who will review membership as the year progresses. Sarah will also take part in regular schooling sessions with team trainers Ferdi Eilberg or Erik Theilgaard.

They start in the new year and will include rider fitness and sports science as well as the actual riding.

Prime squad members will also have the chance to compete at domestic and overseas fixtures, with selectors considering sending riders to international shows throughout Europe.

Sarah is a former member of Banwell Pony Club and has ridden since she was about four.

She left Bristol Grammar School with top-grade A-levels and took a gap year while applying for a place at the University of Bath.

She has now decided to defer taking up the offer for a year as 2009 will be the last time she will be eligible for the under-21 team.

Sarah said: "Bath University has been really supportive. I was worried about starting my first year there and trying to do the riding as well, but they were great and encouraged me to defer taking up my place."

In her junior days, Sarah represented England at the dressage home international in Ireland, but a slipped disc when she was about 16 put her competing on the back burner for a year. As a young rider she has been associated with La Bamba, her 16.2hh Belgian warmblood. But the horse has now reached its peak and Sarah had to take the decision to move onto a new horse, Berkenhorst Artrax – an 11-year-old dark bay Hanoverian.

She said: "La Bamba has been brilliant but he's not quite there, so he will be sold, which will break my heart.

"Artrax is an 11-year-old dark bay Hanoverian who we bought from a lady in Holland, who had had him since he was about three.

"He's quite big and powerful and really big moving. We've only had him for about five months and at the viewing weekend we were really pushed by the trainers as they hadn't really had the chance to see him before."

Sarah's own trainers are Adam Kemp and Matt Frost, who are based near Berkeley.