Clarke Johnstone and Sarah Harris attentively watch their team at the first horse inspection at Melbourne
New Zealand Eventing is putting a lot of focus on its coaching programmes to ensure that emerging talent in the sport has a pathway to become the next Sir Mark Todd or Andrew Nicholson.
We recently spoke to Sarah Harris, the High Performance Director for Equestrian Sports New Zealand about their strategies in this area and we also caught up with Clarke Johnstone to talk about his new career in coaching. Clarke obviously still has a top level riding career but now that he is back in New Zealand on a permanent basis he is also focusing on his coaching career. In June Clarke made his debut as coach for the New Zealand Young Rider team for the Oceania Eventing Championships team at the Melbourne International Horse Trials
In this interview he tells us why he decided to move into a coaching role and how he’s finding the experience as well as explaining some of the thinking behind New Zealand’s approach to ‘growing your own coaches’
Clarke Johnstone
Find out more about Clarke and follow his blog here
Clarke as we usually see him, riding Balmoral Sensation on the way to a win at Kihikihi
