I found this pretty amazing. Well, except for the part where she gets the horse going a million miles an hour then screeches it to a halt-that part made me cringe. But the rest of it, wow, even if you don't ride horses surely you can appreciate how difficult that must be to train.
If you watch it on the actual YouTube site there are some other videos available including some footage of her on the Ellen Degeneres show where she explains that she spent 2 years training, an hour a days five days a week, just to get to the point where she could ride the horse with no saddle or bridle then another year to be ready for competition. Makes my running contact practice seem ridiculous by comparison.
I knew her father, Greg Westfall. He took most of the competition photos of me with my horses (several on my website). I remember when I went to the world Barrel Racing Finals in 1990 and I was really nervous because I was so much younger than the majority of competitors and he had a nice talk with me and gave me confidence (I won reserve world championship that year). An awesome photographer and a really great guy.
ReplyDeleteShe mentioned a little bit about her father in the Ellen interview. It was sad, he'd died of a stroke not to long before that competition in the video and she dedicated her ride to him.
ReplyDeleteI love riding horses but so expensive and time consuming. I rode as a kid and then a few years as an adult. The stable I was riding at had to move because of that big mall in Broomfield being built. They moved so far away, I never followed them.
Does anyone know how she's giving cues? Is she using verbal cues, or is it just body pressure against the horse and control of the mane?
ReplyDeleteI thought it was sweet that the announcer got choked up.
I'd like to be this good at something some day.
My guess is that she's using shifts in her body weight and leg pressure. Probably some verbal cues as well. I think she's only using the mane to hold on, not to issue cues but hard to say.
ReplyDeleteYes, shift in weight, body position, and leg pressure. Reining horses perform a sliding stop and spins on a loose rein.
ReplyDeleteHaving trained both horses and dogs, I would have to say I think training dogs is more challenging. With horses, you always have that physical connection. Unlike handling a dog on an agility at high speed using just motion and location/positional cues.
Yeah, I agree, training dogs is harder for all those reasons.
ReplyDelete