Marlene Battedou - Eventing
Tell us about your riding experience and plans with your horse:
"I was born and raised in France, I discovered a love for riding by accident. I enrolled in a 4 year course at an Agricultural College in Toulouse specialising in equestrian disciplines and farm management.
I had the amazing opportunity to ride owner’s horses and discovered the Eventing discipline. I quickly took to competitions and made it to the National French Championship Final, opening up the door for a high-level rider career. And at the age of 19, I decided to expand my skills by obtaining my International Level 2 Coaching accreditation.
In 2011, I travelled to Australia with the aim of seeing the country. Despite not speaking English at the time, I obtained work as a track rider and subsequently rode horses trained by some of the leading names in Australian racing including Gai Waterhouse, Lee Freedman, Chris Waller and Gerald Ryan. On moving to the South Coast I have enjoyed helping out local trainers, and most especially Terry Robinson.
I combine my interests of thoroughbred horses and eventing by retraining horses off the track to compete at high-level competitions.
My main horse Terrific D’Amour (aka Terry), a little 15.1 hands thoroughbred by Charge Forward, was given to me as a 4-year old and since retraining, we’ve been competing together at major events including International Three Day Events at Sydney, Melbourne and Wallaby Hill, and National events at Berrima, Canberra, Camden, Goulburn, Albury and Tamworth. Our goal for this year will be to compete at the brand new FEI event down at the amazing Willinga Park.
My second horse, Le Grand D’Amour (aka Tiny), 17.2 hands by All Too Hard, came to me 6 months ago. He is slowly learning the ropes to be an eventer, he has already proven his talent in Dressage and absolutely loves jumping. With lots of potential, I am really looking forward to starting the eventing season with him in September 2021.
Not only looking forward to the future for my horses but also of the up end coming Riders that I coach. Once Berry Riding Club completes the cross-country course, eventing on the South Coast would be really exciting.
2021 - a tough year.
In between covid, and on going bad weather, we barely made it to any eventing competition. Sadly they all got cancelled.
Canberra CCI 24/09 (CANCELLED)
Camden CCI 8/10 (CANCELLED)
Albury CCI 5/11 CANCELLED)
Berrima CCN 19/11 (CANCELLED)
Wallaby Hill 3DE CCI 3/12 (CANCELLED)
Both my competition horses were in work on and off, but we spent more time enjoying riding to our local club, in dressage , show jumping or even just riding at the beach or going for long bush ride.
2022
To prepare for the upcoming eventing season, I take my horses to the local Agriculture shows, to get them in a show environment, as it is a pretty special atmosphere and they always learn so much from it.
Unfortunately some of our favorite show like Berry and Milton got cancelled due to bad weather , but we made it to nowra show and had a fabulous time even tried a few different discipline like The ASH classes.
But both horses had a great 2 days of show jumping:
- Terry 1.10m on the first day; 1.15 the second day
- Tiny 80cm first day and 85-90cm on the second day
After his jumping round, Terry got to do the Thoroughbred classes with one of my lovely 11 year old student Skyla Parker and did really well:
- 1st led TB
- 1st Ridden TB
- Reserve Champion - of a very competitive class!
We finally made it to our 1st eventing competition at Canberra CCN 19-20 March 2022.
Unfortunately after all the rain my young horse Tiny suffered from some really bad foot abcesses so he couldn’t make it but Terry competed in the 2* and had a few rails in the show jumping but we had a fabulous time and were so happy to be back eventing after almost 12 months since our last one.
The following weekend we traveled to the amazing venue at Tamworth where I rode Terry in the CCI 2 star. Despite a really wet cross country ground we managed to finish on a great note with only 1 rail to add to our final score.
