Ten for trot for Casablanca!
For Simone Pearce, the last couple of weeks have been a rollercoaster. Twenty-six year old Simone starred at the World Young Dressage Horse Championships in Holland, scoring 10s on both her horses – riding the five-year-old mare, Casablanca, Simone was 4th in both the Qualifier and the Final, on the six-year-old gelding. Feodoro, she was 1st in the Qualifier and 7th in the Final.
Feodoro won the Six Year old Qualifier
In an earlier interview, Simone described her base, Helgstrand Dressage in Denmark, as you drive to the end of the earth and then keep on driving, I asked her, what does it do to your head, one week you are starring at a Worlds, the next, going around a 60 x 20 in the middle of nowhere…
Simone laughs a lot!
“It’s definitely from one world to another, but on the other hand, I’m used to it now, it’s the lifestyle we live.”
There’s no come down?
“Yeah, especially when you live so far away from any sort of society, you definitely get a little bit flat, but at the same time, I’m setting new goals and I’m looking forward to the next challenge.”
I got the impression from the social media that there might have been a little retail therapy done between Holland and Denmark…
That crazy laugh is happening again: “But of course! You cannot have any success or failure without supporting it with retail therapy.”
What are the new goals you have set yourself?
“Now I have my Grand Prix horse, Wladimir, and I go to Germany next month to do my next international show with him, and I have the Danish Championships coming up with both the young horses, and then I’m really starting to think about next season – where I want to be, what I want to do? And what I have to do to get there…”
There has been a bit of shock horror, Casablanca has been sold – but that’s the life of a professional rider isn’t it?
“All the good horses that I have had have been sold and it usually comes after a big success. Sadly the two, go hand-in-hand.”
Do you have a cunning plan to break this cycle and keep a really good horse for yourself?
“I have an idea, but unfortunately not a plan in motion at the moment. I’m always trying and hoping, never stopping fighting to make that a possibility, a really good horse that I get to compete at the top!”
