In June 2020, An Eventful Life celebrates 10 years since the launch of the book that started everything for us
The book, An Eventful Life, published in 2010, provides a written and pictorial insight into the lives of five elite Australian Olympic eventing riders; Megan Jones, Sonja Johnson, Shane Rose, Wendy Schaeffer and Stuart Tinney and a young professional rider just starting out, Emma Scott
We’ll be sharing some excerpts from the book over the next few weeks, starting with a few pages from the section on Megan Jones. South Australia’s Megan is one of the most popular and recognisable riders on the Australian eventing circuit who won team bronze at the World Equestrian Games in Aachen in 2006 and Olympic team silver at Beijing in 2008. She finished fourth individually in Beijing but was so nearly on the individual podium ……
Megan Jones and Kirby Park Irish Jester competing in Hong Kong, 2008 Beijing Olympic Games
Megan Jones - an excerpt
When Megan left school in 1993, she made the most of her “gap” year prior to attempting university.
She went to England, where she spent six months training with Christopher Bartle at the Yorkshire Riding Centre. Megan had enjoyed a few clinics with Chris when he had visited South Australia and thought it would be good to stay at a very structured yard in England. Chris had been a member of Britain’s dressage team from 1981 to 1987 and was also a well- respected event rider who would go on to win Badminton a few years later in 1998 on his mount, Word Perfect.
Megan enjoyed her time in England, learning more about the British way of doing things and watching and riding a wide variety of horses. At the end of her six months she sat her British Horse Society Assistant Instructors exam (the equivalent of Australia’s NCAS Level 1) and was disappointed at the end of the day to be told she had failed. The reason given by the examining board was that she had not been assertive enough, certainly not a trait you see in Megan these days!
“When I came back to Australia, I immediately applied to do my Level 1, which I passed – I must have been more assertive on home ground! I then went on to do my Level 2 when I was just eighteen. I failed the written part of the exam because I couldn’t spell (Megan had dyslexia) and they couldn’t understand what I had written, which was quite laughable really. But I passed all the other teaching parts of it, so I just had to redo the written. Apparently, the examining board were concerned that I was a little young to be sitting my Level 2, so it took them two years before they sent me the paperwork to re-sit my written exam. Luckily, I was able to do the exam orally rather than having to write the answers and I passed.”
As a coach herself, Megan is well aware of the role that coaches and mentors play in an athlete’s life.
Many riders will tell you they were influenced by the great riders they had watched, probably on video or DVD, as they were growing up. Many will tell you about the coach who really started to make a difference to their dressage performance. In Megan’s case she sees her parents as the people who have most influenced her riding career thus far. The support and encouragement they gave both their girls has given them the strength of character to get out of life whatever they wanted, which in Megan’s case was her chance to be an Olympic rider.
Megan also speaks with great affection about her first instructor, Sue Loose, who never saw her student’s stutter as a problem and concentrated on turning this talented little girl into a competent rider. Although Megan’s stutter never really held her back, there was a time when she was too scared to ask for help from “outside” riders or coaches, fearing that she might start to stutter and feel embarrassed. So she became an avid watcher.
“I watched how other people rode and I watched what they did with their horses. I watched how they tied up lead ropes, organised their trucks, put on their horses’ boots and bandages. I learnt a lot”
Megan enjoyed her first lesson with Wayne Roycroft at the age of eleven, although she admits she really didn’t know how “important” he was at that stage. All she knew was that she had to wear top boots and a collared shirt, which had to be tucked in, so there was the inkling that he was someone to be respected. Then there were the lessons from one of America’s best event riders and Olympians, Tad Coffin. His lessons were very structured and included theory and stretches, the latter of which were done prior to getting on the horse – unheard of at the time.
Megan was also lucky enough to have lessons from various visiting German coaches, so her instruction was intense and varied. Despite not always understanding what she was being told, she always wanted to impress her instructors and would try her hardest to do what they were asking her to do.
“All those coaches influenced me, not necessarily in what they were teaching me, but in the way they made me try my hardest to do the right thing. I hated being told off and would work hard to get a good comment from them, which wasn’t always easy. But I never gave up trying to get a good comment, which is something that is still in me today. Whether it is a coach or a dressage judge, at a local event or the Olympics, I keep looking for those good comments.”
This attitude gives an insight into what Megan puts at the top of her list of career highlights. This practical girl doesn’t get carried away with all the glitz and glamour of those top events. Winning is what’s important and that’s why, for Megan, her first win at the Young Rider Championships at Naracoorte in 1993 is still the highlight of her career. It was also the first time she had felt exceptionally emotional after a win.
“I was riding Hats Away, who was an amazing horse and would jump anything I asked him to. I was lying second after cross country while my friend, Tara Trebilcock, was in the lead. When I show- jumped clear and Tara had a fence down, I realised I had won and, all of a sudden, everything went fuzzy. I started crying and was more emotional than I had ever been before. I don’t think I stopped smiling for about three weeks. It was an incredible feeling.”
Not surprisingly, Megan’s highlights seem to reflect the mile-stones in her career. After achieving her first Young Rider win, the next goal was to get on a senior team. That happened in 2001 when she took her place with Paddy as part of the Australian Trans-Tasman team at the Adelaide International Three Day Event. The team won the event for only the second time in its twenty-year history.
A goal had been set and achieved: the next goal was to get to a world championship. The 2006 World Equestrian Games in Aachen gave Megan the opportunity to tick that box too and, together with the rest of the team, she brought home a bronze medal.
The natural progression from success at a world championship is to be part of an Olympic Games team. Two years later Megan, riding Jester, took her rightful place as part of the Australian Team at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games held in Hong Kong. It was an experience that she describes as “amazing, yet disappointing” as she feels she let herself down.
“Everyone would think that winning the team silver medal at the Olympic Games would be the most amazing thing but, to me, I also lost a gold medal. I had two fences down and I lost the individual gold medal. I shouldn’t have done that; I should have ridden it better. I don’t like getting things wrong and I should have tried harder.”
International experience
Megan’s Olympic experience started way before Hong Kong. One of her goals had always been to get onto an Australian team and so, in typical, organised Megan manner, she thought it would be a good idea to find out what a “team” situation was all about. With that in mind, Megan, who lives close to fellow event rider Wendy Schaeffer, offered to groom for Wendy at both the World Equestrian Games in The Hague in 1994 and the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.
Those experiences were to prove invaluable for the girl who was soaking up like a sponge how the “team game” was played. She learnt what happens in team training, from the ritual of trotting the horses up straight from the stable so that team vet Denis Goulding could watch how they moved, to the work that National Coach Wayne Roycroft expected them to do with their horses. To a vast extent the Australian team training, team selection, team expectations and team instruction methods have stayed the same for many years (as have the experienced double act of Wayne and Denis), so Megan feels that this experience put her one step ahead of many of her rivals from the start.
“I learnt so much from those two experiences. So when my plan came into play and I was on the long list for my first Trans-Tasman team I already knew the process. It didn’t mean that I wasn’t nervous or worried, but I knew what to expect, which made it so much easier. I was ready to ‘play the game’ and make my team debut.”
By the time Megan was selected for the 2008 Olympic team she was feeling comfortable and confident about being in a team situation. On the flight to Hong Kong, one team member, Shane Rose, travelled with the horses while Megan and another team member Sonja Johnson travelled with Wayne Roycroft on a regular Qantas flight.
“We were all travelling economy class, but Wayne asked the hostess if, as he was a Platinum club member, he could be upgraded to business class. Surprisingly, they said yes and Wayne then, very generously, told Sonja and me that we could share the seat between us, which was great. I took the first shift to sleep in my little business class ‘pod’, but when it was time to do the swap my hostess (who by this time had discovered that I was on my way to the Olympics), refused to wake me and by the time I woke up poor Sonja only got to spend the last couple of hours in comfort.”
Once in the Olympic Equestrian Village, Megan had to pinch herself as she rode in the warm-up arenas in the days prior to the Games, alongside the likes of Anky van Grunsven, Isabelle Werth and Mark Todd.
She found it even more amazing when these same people would speak to her and admire her horse. As for the actual memories of large, noisy crowds on dressage, cross-country and show-jumping days, she finds it difficult to recall them. Once the event had started, she had a job to do and all those sorts of distractions were blocked out as she got on with it.
Despite her personal disappointment in Hong Kong of not winning the individual gold medal, Megan isn’t one to dwell on the things that have gone wrong. It’s simply a case of trying to put them right and not make the same mistakes again.
© An Eventful Life - Life Stories of Eventing Champions
Read the excerpt from the chapter on Shane Rose here
Read the excerpt from the chapter on Wendy Schaeffer here
Megan and Kirby Park Impress at the Australian International 3 Day Event 2019
