A Q&A with Summer Nicholls – Swiftclean’s sponsored rider
We’ll start with a Q&A session with Summer, our sponsored event rider and then find out how her 2024 season is progressing with her two horses Alfie, and ex racehorse Hugo (Hooves the Daddy).
How did you get into horse riding?
I grew up in a family passionate about horses. My love for equestrian sport started at a very young age. In fact, I was sitting on a horse before I could even walk, and the first competition I attended was when I was just weeks old! I have three older sisters, all of whom owned and competed with horses, and my mom has owned horses since her teenage years. I used to attend all their competitions and couldn’t wait to start competing myself.
I joined my local Pony Club (Essex Union South) at a young age and began competing and representing the club. I qualified for my first nationals at 12-years-old with my special pony, Penny, who is still owned by my family and is now teaching my nieces and nephews how to ride.
I represented the club in U16’s and U18s, as well as Eastern England for two years in British Eventing. I then progressed to international level eventing and completed an apprenticeship in Advanced Sporting Excellence. Despite the time and expense, as well as a full time job,I continue to compete almost every weekend outside of work.
What is eventing?
Eventing involves three separate disciplines: Dressage, Showjumping and Cross-Country, the aim being to get the lowest possible score. Over each phase you can pick up penalties causing your score to rise. Finishing on your dressage score is considered to be a very good result, as it rarely happens!
The first discipline is Dressage, which is a series of regimented movements that you present to a judge, most of you will recognise this as ‘the dancing horses’. The idea is to show complete harmony between horse and rider, it must look perfect, as each movement is scored between 1-10.
Show jumping involves jumping a series of timed knockable fences. This is most commonly everyone’s least favourite discipline. Mainly because everyone looks for a horse that is brave enough to jump all the fences on a cross-country course. However, this means they don’t respect the fences enough in the show jumping resulting in some cricket scores and causing your overall score to rise – it’s difficult to train horses to do both!
Lastly is Cross Country, my favourite but the most challenging. It is a timed series of fences which usually includes ditches, hedges, logs and water combinations over the country. At each level we’re given the metres per minute we must ride at, we then must work out our minute markers and pace ourselves. You will be penalised for going too fast, likewise if you’re over the optimum time.
How dangerous is the sport of eventing?
Horse-riding, specifically eventing, is incredibly dangerous. I have had numerous falls during my competitive career which resulted in multiple concussions, a sprained arm and being trodden on by a horse (with metal studs in). It’s safe to say it’s not for the faint-hearted! But generally, I have been lucky as I’ve had a few falls where the horse has fallen as well, which are the worst type. I’ve ridden from a young age so I’ve learnt how to fall properly and roll out of the way of the horse. This is most common in Cross-Country as you have to travel at speed and a lot of the fences are immovable so if you hit the fence on the wrong stride things can go badly wrong quite quickly!
In recent years more safety features have been put in. Some fences have frangible pins, so if the horse leaves a leg over a fence, the pin will release, causing the fence to fall and stop a serious fall.
Is it a physically challenging sport?
Without a doubt. Something I have heard many times is ‘Well, don’t you just sit there? The horse does all the work!’. It may seem that way but that is the aim of the sport, to make it look easy. We do a lot of fitness training for the horses, during competition season they must be ridden every day, sometimes even twice a day.
For my own fitness, I work out every day. I also have my own Personal Trainer; we mainly work on strength and balance work. My horses weigh between 400 and 500kg so I have to be strong to be able to control them, especially round a course of fences but equally when handling them. They need to be very fit and this can make them a lot more difficult to handle on the ground. Not only this, there is also a lot of manual labour involved in owning horses, mucking out their stables every day, carrying water buckets and hay nets – you become strong fairly quickly!
2024 Season Update:
This season we switched disciplines to British Showjumping with Hugo, rather than eventing. Typically, in showjumping the fences are higher and you are timed on your rounds so you need to be quicker than you are in eventing.
I have been competing Hugo in the Newcomers classes and Members Cup classes – the starting height for these are 1m10 and 1m15. He has had one win this year as well as two seconds which has gained him three qualifications, two of these are for second rounds and the other qualification is for the Novice Championship at the Scope Festival.
With Alfie, I have continued to concentrate on eventing, although precarious weather this season has meant we have had quite a few competitions cancelled, or had to withdraw due to concerns over the ground. We recently had an event at Blindley Heath in Surrey where he was in second place after the first two phases, after pulling an amazing dressage test out of the bag. Unfortunately, it was very warm that day and the ground was hard so, due to the higher risk of injury, we decided to withdraw him at this stage. He has qualified for an International event at Wellington this weekend in Hampshire so I decided to save him for this event as it is a much bigger scale event.
Also coming up, we’re hoping to step Hugo up to Foxhunters which is 1m20 in height, our biggest track yet!
Wellington Horse Trials UPDATE:
Summer competed Alfie at Wellington International Horse Trials in Hampshire recently in the 2* section, the weekend started off with a washout Saturday which meant completing their dressage test in the torrential rain – but a great result of 31.3 for the pair, putting them into 7th place overnight. The team then travelled back again on the Sunday for a second day of competition in thankfully much more enjoyable weather conditions. An unfortunate pole down in the showjumping phase, over a tricky course and a clear cross-county round meant they finished outside of the top ten but with a great weekend of competition under their belt.
The spotlight moves to Hugo next week, as Summer heads to Hickstead with him for the Newcomers and Foxhunter showjumping classes.
If you’d like to follow Summer’s story more:
Social Media
Instagram – @summer_nicholls
Tiktok – @summernichollss
