{"id":23164,"date":"2015-05-22T10:25:23","date_gmt":"2015-05-22T00:25:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/?p=23164"},"modified":"2017-02-09T16:56:19","modified_gmt":"2017-02-09T05:56:19","slug":"more-adventures-in-the-incredible-life-of-hannah-dodd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/2015\/05\/more-adventures-in-the-incredible-life-of-hannah-dodd\/","title":{"rendered":"More Adventures in the incredible life of Hannah Dodd"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"hannahHeader\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>What do most young people do when their mum is out of town? Have a wild party? Take the car for a spin? Or like me, enter a One Day Event?<\/p>\n

To understand this story there probably needs to be a bit of background. I have a 5yo project pony I have been bringing along for the past two years, his main focus is of course dressage but I have exposed him to as much as possible as I want him to be a kid\u2019s pony. My mum and I had been talking about putting him in an ODE for a few months but with someone else riding. Now for those of you the don\u2019t know me or haven\u2019t seen in the past few months; I am a para-equestrian rider (London 2012 Paralympian) how ever in the last 6-9 months I have had a rapid deterioration in my legs and balance leaving me predominately a wheelchair user, I can\u2019t even rise trot without holding onto the saddle and even then it\u2019s pretty messy! So imagine my mother\u2019s horror when I informed her that I planned on taking my 5 year old pony who had never seen a cross country course around the 60cm newcomers track at SIEC with legs that can\u2019t get me into jumping position. It was met with a resounding WHAT?!?! (and a few other words I can\u2019t put in print).<\/p>\n

However after much pleading and begging she reluctantly agreed to let me have a crack – now all we had to figure out was how to jump without legs! Thankfully my little pony Eli is a pretty easy going guy and after a bit of trial and error I found if I grabbed his mane I could pull myself up to jump and then push on his neck to get back in the saddle. Crude but effective!<\/p>\n

The big day arrived with a drizzle and clouds and we packed ourselves off to SIEC, mum a nervous wreck and myself not far behind. Dressage up first which we breezed through relatively easily, with my new problems, we have been having a few issues with balance and contact to finish up 4th<\/sup> with 69%. A clear showjumping round saw us stay in the top 5 and then the moment mum had been dreading the cross country! We were under time but had two refusals one at the water jump where Eli had a \u2018you want me to go in there!?!\u2019 moment and another at the next jump where he had a little slip about five strides out and I lost my stirrups so I had to pull him up.<\/p>\n

\"Hannah<\/a><\/p>\n

Photo – Peter Orr<\/p>\n

All in all a successful day. I believe we finished at the bottom of the class but I actually didn\u2019t care, my awesome little pony got me around safely and I didn\u2019t need the ambulance for mum (always a plus!). As much as the day put a stress on mum\u2019s anxiety levels, broadening my horizons was been fun and while I will be relying on wheelchair basketball to give me my adrenaline thrills, it nice to know I have an alternative!<\/p>\n

As I said the last couple of years have been a bit up and down and a little bit of diversifying my sporting interests, the main one being I learnt to play wheelchair basketball. Now I originally took up basketball as a fun sport to relieve the stress of high level equestrian \u2013 I should\u2019ve known better, I\u2019m a competitive little thing!<\/p>\n

\"hannahBasketball\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After playing my first tournament in January 2013 I was picked up by the Sydney University Flames to play in the Women\u2019s National Wheelchair Basketball League (WNWBL) getting Runner up Rookie of the Year. Last year things took a bit more of a competitive edge with me being invited to join the Women\u2019s National Squad \u2018The Gliders\u2019 and the U25 Squad \u2018Devils\u2019. I was longlisted for the World Champs and along with playing in the WNWBL spent a large amount of time at training camps, the biggest one being in December at the Australian Institute of Sport where I was told that I would be making my international debut at the Osaka Cup in Japan in February. I cannot tell you what this meant to me, after London Paralympics I wasn\u2019t sure if I would ever wear green and gold again and to pull on my singlet and push out onto the court for my first international match took my breath away (there were a few tears shed in private) I had an amazing week, despite the cold (not great with limited circulation!) and came home with a bronze medal.<\/p>\n

Now looking ahead, I have my big horse Sam who has just returned from injury, once he\u2019s fit we\u2019ll look to competing Small Tour before aiming towards the U25 Grand Prix next year. The WNWBL kicks off in a few months and for the first time I am hopefully going to play in the Men\u2019s National League as well. Qualifiers for both Equestrian and Basketball are at the end of the year along with U25 World Champs for Basketball. It\u2019s going to be a busy few months and a hectic year but I can\u2019t wait!<\/p>\n

Wish me Luck!<\/p>\n

Hannah<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australian Paralympic Dressage Rider, Hannah Dodd continues to push the boundaries…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":23169,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1111,1112],"class_list":["post-23164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dressage","tag-hannah-dodd","tag-paralympic-dressage-rider"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23164"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32293,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23164\/revisions\/32293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}