SWAN Hill Pony Club rider Peta Nietvelt has been crowned the national Ride to Time champion with horse Chance Taken (Angelo) after putting out a perfect performance at the national championship.
Competing virtually in the 2021 Thoroughbred Industry Careers Pony Club Australian National Championships, Peta said it was not exactly what she had been expecting.
“It was a virtual event so it kind of a had a bit of a different feeling because we didn’t have everyone that was competing there,” she said.
Peta was one of eight selected in the Victorian team to travel down to Cranbourne to compete.
“It was a pretty awesome experience, because obviously it’s a massive racecourse and there was all the different tracks and we got to go through the tunnels to get onto the tracks,” Peta said.
The horse that I was riding was an off-the-track racehorse, so taking him to something like that was obviously a massive atmosphere for him, but he handled himself really really well.”
The Ride to Time event is about learning how to ride at a certain pace and judge how fast your horse is travelling. It is particularly important in events like show jumping and cross country. For Peta’s event, the Maiden class, riders had to ride 1000 metres at 500 metres per minute, so two minutes in total.
“Her actual time at the national championships was 2.00, it was absolutely spot on,” Peta’s mother, Judy Nietvelt, said.
“You can’t beat a perfect score.”
However, Peta and Judy didn’t find out Peta’s actual score until a while after she had competed.
“Peta was really good at being able to time it, she said, ‘Mum, I was pretty close’, but we weren’t actually given times until around December 25, possibly later, so we had to wait that whole time until we actually found a result,” Judy said.
For Peta, her road to nationals has been, in a way, a long time coming.
“I guess my journey to nationals has been massive, I’ve been in pony club for 10 years, and working with thoroughbreds ever since I finished school, and it’s what I love,” Peta said.
“You can only compete in pony club up until you are 26, so it was sort of my final year to be able to compete at that level.”
“It’s led to all sorts of things in her career as well,” Judy said.
While there aren’t really any other avenues for Peta to continue competing in Ride to Time events, she is still keen to keep working with horses.
“I guess how I’m taking it further is that I still track ride every morning, and what I am working on from there is I’m currently working on a fast-works certificate, but I’ll continue to just ride for my little trainer, he’s been amazing and all of his horses are just so good.”
