Far North teenager helps Australia secure victory
andrea.davy@ruralweekly.com.au
A TEEN from a tiny town in Queensland’s tropics helped secure Australia’s victory at the World Mounted Games.
Fifteen-year-old Tiarni Kenderdine, who is a member of the Babinda Pony Club, about an hour south of Cairns, is back riding in the rain at her Mirawinni home after a whirlwind trip to Colorado.
She was selected for the Aussie team after a process where the Queensland Pony Club put forward her name.
“It was a dream come true,” she said. “My mum has ridden horses all her life and I started competing in pony club when I was about four.”
Her success hasn’t come easy – she practises on horses and ponies about four times a week, and competes most weekends at gymkhanas.
Mum Eileen was quick to quip conditions in one of Australia’s wettest towns were never perfect: “We have a saying at the Babinda Pony Club, ‘if you don’t ride in the rain, you don’t ride at all’,” she said.
The win follows secondplace finishes in 2017 and 2018 for team Australia.
Youngsters from several states had a chance to meet, go sightseeing and have lessons with competitors from the US, Canada and the UK.
“We got to go riding in the Rocky Mountains,” she said.
The actual competition was high pressure.
Tiarni only spent about five minutes on each new pony before the start gun sounded.
“That was a big experience,” she said. “Every pony was completely different, some knew exactly what they were doing, some didn’t, some just wanted to stand there and not move at all and some were naughty ponies.”
Tiarni’s favourite event was stepping stones, a competition that meant she had to race to a spot, dismount, skip along seven pots, then remount and rush to the finish line.
Australia came second in this event.
Mounted Games were the inspiration of HRH Prince Philip.
He asked Colonel Sir Mike Ansell, then director of the Horse of the Year Show, to devise a competition for children who could not afford an expensive, well-bred pony.
The first Mounted Games Championship for the Prince Philip Cup was staged in 1957 and the competition is now annual.
In 2020 the games will be held in Western Australia.
IT WAS A DREAM COME TRUE. MY MUM HAS RIDDEN HORSES ALL HER LIFE
TIARNI KENDERDINE