Riding Star by Stacy Gregg

Author:Stacy Gregg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

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The Dupree horses needed a day to recover from their long truck journey so the girls decided to trial their new Thoroughbred acquisitions first.

Georgie was relieved to see that the Thoroughbreds were more relaxed, having had a couple of days to settle into their new home. Their eyes were no longer out on stalks as they walked the Burghley House corridor, but they were still tense and twitchy as the girls tacked them up in their new gear – a complicated arrangement of gag bits, martingales and surcingles.

Emily wasn’t certain about the new kit either.

“These saddles are weird,” she said as she threw one across her mare’s back. “They’ve got no kneepads.”

“Polo saddles don’t have kneepads,” Alice said. “It makes it easier for the rider to move around to swing the stick.”

Georgie’s first mount for the day was the young bay mare with the ewe neck that she had bought off Bart O’Malley. The mare’s racing name was Lear Jet, so Georgie had shortened it to Jet. She was an extremely edgy mare and as Georgie mounted up, Jet was so anxious her flanks were trembling.

“Easy, Jet,” Georgie reassured her as she asked the mare to walk on.

Talking softly to the mare, Georgie walked her back and forth up and down the corridor as the other girls tacked up. She had almost got Jet calmed down, when she made the fatal mistake of leaning over the polo mallet stand and reaching in to grab herself a mallet. At the sight of the bamboo stick in her rider’s hand Jet assumed she was in for a beating. Before Georgie could stop her, she had backed away in a total panic and kept on backing up all the way down the corridor!

“Jet!”

Georgie kicked the mare forward, trying once again, but Alice shook her head. “You won’t get her near that stand. She thinks the polo stick is a whip.”

Georgie dismounted and led the mare forward, but as soon as she took a stick in her hand the whites of the mare’s eyes showed and she backed away in a frenzy once more.

“She’s not going to make much of a polo mare if I can’t hold a stick anywhere near her!” Georgie was frustrated.

“Forget about the stick today,” Alice suggested. “Just ride her without one.”

Admitting defeat, Georgie rode Jet without a mallet out on to the polo fields. At least the mare had a nice canter, she thought as she urged her on to ride in a steady circle. Jet’s ewe neck meant that she tended to run like a giraffe with her head held high, but Georgie eventually got her going nicely on the bit, cantering in a good, steady circle.

Emily emerged from the stables on her first mount of the day – one of the two chestnuts she had bought at Keeneland Park.

“They’re easy to tell apart,” Emily told Georgie. “Nala has a white coronet on her near hind and Jocasta hasn’t got any white at all.”

Emily was riding Jocasta first. The chestnut mare seemed fine as she cantered her around on her own.

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