Horse-Riding Sisters Share the Reins
05/10/2010 |
If there are two sides to every story, you’d never know it talking to Anna and Alice Beckman. Their story, as sisters, is almost identical. They live on a farm in Ashville, Ohio. They’ve always ridden horses, Anna since she was four and Alice since she was three (today Anna’s 18 and Alice is 16).
Both girls are active in the U.S. Pony Club and the U.S. Eventing Association, two national organizations for competitive riders. They’re both in the National Honor Society, both play varsity sports, and both in FFA, where together they started an equine judging team. They even complete each other’s sentences.
Like this, their answer to a question about what it takes to do well in dressage, an equestrian event that takes place in an arena and includes a series of “tests” – how well you can trot in a tight circle, for example, or your ability to stop on a dime.
Anna: “Everything about dressage is challenging.”
Alice: “The thing about dressage is that it’s about precision and correctness, so every step has to be right, and your horse has to carry itself right.”
Anna: “And then the rider has to be in the correct form, too.”
Alice: “And you have to communicate to your horse without the judge being able to see it. You have to give your horse invisible signals and still have them do everything perfectly.”
In the Saddle
The story of Anna and Alice begins with their mother, who taught them to ride.
“She had horses since she was a kid,” says Alice, a college freshman at Otterbein College. “So she decided we should have horses, too.”
The Beckmans’ farm, a hundred or so acres of woods and fields, includes goats, seven horses, and lots of trails and open space. It’s an ideal place to ride.
“During the summer we usually ride every day, because that’s when the peak show season is,” Alice says.
The rest of the year they ride about every other day, she says. Plus there’s all the work – the feeding, the grooming, and the general maintenance – that comes with the terrain.
“We don’t keep them in a barn, so we don’t have to clean out their stalls every day,” Alice explains. “But we do have to check on them every day when they’re out in the pasture and make sure they’re alright.”
Anna’s horse, the one she calls her own, is a 12-year-old Palomino Appaloosa named Blake. Alice rides a thoroughbred named Bella, who foaled last year.
They ride each other’s horses, Anna explains, as well as the others on the farm, but they ride their own for competition. Training, she says, has become a way of life.
“We’ve been riding now for 13 or 14 years,” Anna says. “And we’re still not as good as we could be. It takes a really long time to get good, and you have to be really dedicated. And you have to be willing to be out there when it’s a hundred degrees, and to just keep practicing.”
Alice, of course, agrees.
“It takes a lot of work. You have to have patience, because your horse isn’t always going to be perfect,” she says. “And you’re not always going to have a perfect ride, even though you want to.”
When it comes to competition, Anna and Alice’s specialty is “eventing.” In eventing, riders are put to the test in three separate disciplines: dressage, stadium jumping, and cross-country jumping. Dressage – well, they already explained that. Stadium jumping involves successive leaps over “fences” and tight turns in a ring. The third event, cross-country, is a challenging ride of endurance, and both Anna and Alice consider it their favorite. Riders guide their horses across miles of open fields, through stretches of woods, and over big, intimidating jumps that for some prove too difficult to clear.
“I like that it’s fast and can be dangerous,” Alice says.
“Same,” says Anna. “And the runs are long, which is fun.”
More Than Horses
Having fun, but at the same time working hard, seems to be what life, for these two, is all about. And so their plans for the future are similar. Given the right opportunities, they’d both like to ride in the Olympics someday. They’re both continuing their athletic careers – Anna as a soccer player at Otterbein College, and Alice as a runner on the Teays Valley cross-country team. And finally, they both have plans to become veterinarians.
Anna is majoring in equine science, and is enrolled in her school’s pre-vet program; Alice may go to college with her sister, or she might try somewhere else – she’s not certain yet.
So would they ever consider starting a veterinary practice together? Unlikely, says Anna. While it might be fun, they are, after all, sisters.
“We argue about everything,” she says. “Probably not a good idea.”
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