Nelson teen in ‘full on’ horseback sport
You’ve got to be pretty fit to be the best at more than 40 different games, let alone play them all on horseback.
Johnny Carter, 18, from Wakefield near Nelson, had grown up around horses. But it wasn’t until a few years ago that he came across mounted games: “Someone introduced it to me, and yeah, I loved it, so yeah, just got stuck into it really.”
Various challenges were played at horseback height and on ground level, which involved lots of vaulting on and off the horses. Carter said it was “a lot more full on” than other equestrian sports.
“It’s a lot different to your show jumping and your dressage,” he said. “I think there’s about like 42 different games … they’re all different, like every game is different to the other.”
One of those was the “sock and bucket” race – being the fastest to pick up socks, one by one, and place them in a bucket in the middle of the field. “You race up, put the sock in the bucket, jump off, pick the sock up, and you’ve got to leap back on, vault back onto your horse ... and then first one across the line obviously wins and gets the most points,” he said.
Mounted games required a good level of fitness, particularly if riders had a steed like Carter’s – Blaze, his 15-year-old main competition horse. “The horse I’ve got, you’ve got to stay pretty fit or he’ll bloody break you ... [he’s] powerful,” Carter said. “It definitely took me at least two years, two seasons to get right into it.”
Carter was now among Aotearoa’s best at playing the sport, having already competed internationally in Kentucky in the United States, and South Africa last year.
He and his team-mate Mack Williams took out the mounted games under-18 pairs division at the 2024 Horse of Year event in March.
“That was a pretty good effort from us both,” Carter said.
“We won it last year as well, so just keeping the title really, me and Mack. And then yeah, did the teams as well, open teams. We won it as well, me and the team.”
Carter also came third place in the open class individual division at the New Zealand Individuals Championship in Canterbury over Easter. If he hadn’t had trouble with his saddle in the first couple of races, Carter reckoned he might have won.
“I stuffed up, so they sent me back from the start.
“But nah, got the points back up and yeah, finished with third, so I was pretty happy with it after all,” he said.
His next big challenge would he in July, when he travels with the New Zealand team to the world champs in Italy.