Ballito mounted games rider brings Western Cape team to KZN

Local South African Mounted Games horse rider and founder of the Western Province (WP) Mounted Games association, Danielle Vinay (20), coached, captained and managed the WP team in their second Inter-provincial (IPTs) competition last weekend in Ashburton.

Vinay has already represented SA in Mounted Games three times in South Africa, New Zealand and Australia and coached the development team in the Southern Hemisphere Champs within the four short years that she has been training in the sport.

She has also competed as an individual in the SA champs for two years.

“This is an equestrian sport that involves a series of 28 different skill based races that require speed, accuracy, agility and strength from both the rider and their horse. This truly is a sport where what you put in you get out,” said Vinay.

Vinay left Ballito to study toward a BSC at the University of Stellenbosch in 2012 making it difficult for her to be as involved in the sport.

So she started up the Mounted Games Association in 2013 with permission and accreditation given by the chairman of the South African Mounted Games Association, Ian Mar.

“I loved the sport so much and it was the only way for me to keep doing it.”

She had to introduce the sport and build awareness on her own through training clinics, which she provided in four regions around the Western Cape.

From these clinics she contacted all the people interested in wanting to represent WP and hosted her own provincial trails.

Vinay had to build a team with the right riding skills from scratch and train them to compete in their first Inter-provincial competition in 2013 in a period of four months.

“This sport requires a lot more training than any other riding discipline. It is not just about how fast your horse can go. It is about training your horse to be well behaved, to have full control and have them respond in the correct way while five other horses are going at full speed around you. It is about speed when asked, turning well, stopping well and listening to the rider’s weight.”

This year the WP team doubled in size with an ‘Open/young rider’ team being added to the mix. Again Vinay had only four months to get the teams together and train them up for the 2014 IPTs in Durban.

WP was the only team competing on borrowed ponies creating even more of a challenge for the team.

“I am super proud of my teams. They really put up a good fight and managed to get quite a few first and second places. We only had one day to train on the new ponies and then we went straight into the three day long competition.”

WP team placed third overall.

“In every race there were small victories along the way – I could not be happier.”