Her aim is the Olympics in 2004
By: John Tredrea
Listening to her talk about horseback riding makes it difficult to imagine Lindsay Alston without the sport as an integral part of her life. She’s been so wrapped up with riding since she was 5 years old that she routinely talks about things from the horse’s perspective with such precise assurance that you feel sure she’s read the animal’s mind.
For example, she’ll say: "Horses like the big, solid-looking fences. The airy ones are deceptive."
The fences Ms. Alston’s talking about are the ones horses jump during competitions. It stands to reason she would know a lot about them from both the human and equine perspective. The 2002 honors grad of Hopewell Valley Central High School has been riding competitively most of her life and has excelled at it.
In May, she was tied for fourth place in the list of top 10 Young Riders in the country and hopes to compete in Three-Day Eventing in the 2004 Olympics. Ms. Alston’s horse, All Business, was tied for seventh on the list of top 10 mares in the country in May.
All Business got her name from the way she feels about jumps, and it was Ms. Alston who named her.
"She likes to jump. Some horses tend to avoid it," Ms. Alston said. "She hops on her hind legs in the start box during competitions because she can’t wait to jump. I got her when she was three and a half. She was different from the other horses I had in that the others all had been fully trained before I rode them. I remember our first jump together. She took it at full speed. I was terrified, but she went over it so well. After she did, I said, ‘You can’t fool this horse. She’s all business.’ The name stuck.’"
Three-Day Eventing, in which men and women compete against one another on an equal footing, consists of three disciplines: dressage, cross country and jumping.
Dressage, done on the first day, is comprised of a series of complicated moves performed in an enclosed arena. Held the second day, the cross county event is a rigorous test of the speed, endurance and jumping ability of the horse. During the jumping event on the third day, horse and rider negotiate a series of colored fences in an enclosed ring.
"Because of all the energy and effort the horse has put into the endurance test on the second day, the jumping event is really a challenge," Ms. Alston said. "When I go out on that jumping course with All Business, we feel as though our lives depend on each other. And they really do some of the jumps are over four and a half feet high. She trusts me and I trust her. But you know you’re going to fall sometimes. If you ride often enough, you have to fall once in a while. That’s just the nature of it. All kinds of things can happen. Sometimes a horse your own or someone else’s will kick you. Once I was walking near a horse a very big one, as it turns out and bent down to pet a dog. The horse split my head open and gave me a concussion. I rode later that day. It was a team competition. I had to."
In basketball or baseball, an athlete with that attitude a determination to play even when hurt is called a "gamer." Ms. Alston expects her horses to be gamers, too.
"The attitude is the thing," she declared. "You can have a horse with all the talent in the world. But it’s the mind. They need to be bold and confident and be able to deal with ups and downs and with a little bit of pain at end of the day."
Competing all over the eastern United States and southern Canada, Ms. Alston has won many awards. This year, she took fourth place in the Young Riders classification of the United States Combined Training Association’s (USCTA) competition.
"It’s a very challenging sport. It requires the same kind of concentration as figure skating. That’s one of the things that appeals to me about it."
Another is the chance to get to know a horse very well, and for the horse to know her.
"A rider and horse have to adjust to one another," she said. "You have to know how to ask the horse for something and you have to be able to tell, very quickly, what the answer is. Coming into a jump, you have to think about where you want the horse to take off. It’s called ‘seeing your distance.’ You have to think about your speed and the length of the strides the horse is taking when you’re deciding what your takeoff point will be. Once you decide, you communicate it to the horse with the reins, and sometimes your heels, and by how you align yourself on the horse."
The communication continues after horse and rider become airborne. "You do things like soften the hold on the reins to give the horse’s neck the amount of freedom it needs for the jump to go well," Ms. Alston said.
Competitive horse riding is financially demanding. Hopewell Township residents Peter and Landis Eaton and Steve and Nancy Jusick recently hosted a fund-raiser for Ms. Alston as she sets her sights on the Junior Olympics this summer, then the Pan American Games and finally the Olympics, two years from now. Anyone wishing to support her may do so by check, to the American Horse Trials Foundation, 221 Grove Cove Road, Centreville, Md., 21617. Include a notation that the contribution is for Ms. Alston.