Rebecca Howard’s relocation to London, England, the mecca of her equestrian sport, helped soften the overwhelming disappointment she experienced at the Summer Olympics.
Howard and her fellow members of the Canadian Eventing Team suffered one blow after another during the second phase of the competition – cross-country jumping – with only two of the five-member team completing the course. Then, due to an injured horse, only one of those two was able to move forward to the stadium jumping competition.
This, after they had all done well in the first phase of the Olympic competition, dressage.
Prior to the Olympics, Salmon Arm’s Howard had decided to move to London for at least two years following the Games in order to benefit from riding and training there.
“I feel really glad I’m making plans here. It is the mecca of the sport… I’m ready to do the next stage. It makes me more hungry to get better,” she told the Observer from London Monday.
Howard, who set her sights on the Olympics as a young teen, fell at jump 14, halfway through the course.
“For me it was a comedy of errors; it easily could have been fine. For whatever reason, it wasn’t.”
She recalls the moment.
“Honestly, for me, it was pure shock. I was almost sort of numb that night. I didn’t really know what happened until I watched the videos. It was bizarre. I couldn’t clearly tell you why it went wrong at that moment.”
What did happen, she now knows, is that Riddle Master slipped in front of the jump.
“When he slipped I lost a rein. He wouldn’t think of not jumping – he saw where we were supposed to go.”
However, he added another stride where he normally would have left the ground, which, had Howard been able to guide him with the rein, she would have been able to prevent. The huge crowds and noise also affected him a little.
Along with shock and a range of emotions, Howard felt extreme disappointment, not only for herself but for the team of people who supported her – from her groom Dana Cooke from Merritt to her coach David O’Connor – and many others.
“You just feel like you let so many people down. You can’t help but feel that way. They’re there to do a job ultimately and you didn’t get it done.”
She says her feelings about the Olympics still vary from day to day.
Although the jumps on the cross-country course looked terribly formidable to the average television viewer, Howard said they were nothing that she and Riddle Master hadn’t faced before.
The pair excels on what are called four-star courses, the highest level. The London course was not built to quite that level because of all the different countries participating. She said the jumps were beautiful but the course was difficult thanks to many hills and turns.
“It was a really twisty, turny track. The cross-country was done on quite a small piece of land and hilly, so it wasn’t typical galloping and getting in a rhythm. It was a little bit like being in a tumble dryer.”
Heading into the course, she felt good.
“I have an amazing horse, we’ve come a long way, we have a great partnership and we had a good season leading up to it. The atmosphere got to him but, honestly, I kind of thrive on it.”
She says that “Rupert (Riddle Master’s nickname) has seen crowds, but this was a whole other level. All the galloping lanes were thick with people. I couldn’t even hear my watch.”
Eventing Nation, a go-to website for eventing, contains a post from Howard on the Games. The site introduces her piece by terming her “one of the toughest mental competitors in our sport.”
That toughness seems evident still, with Howard already keen to move on.
She and Rupert will do one more competition in England before he will have his vacation – two months without shoes, relaxing in a field.
Howard, meanwhile, will be building new connections, and finding new owners and additional horses to ride.
Although she will continue to ride Rupert, aiming for the World Games in two years and the Olympics in four, she does not want to depend solely on him.
“A lot of the best guys in the world, they’re going into the Games with three horses qualified and ready. If one gets hurt, they’ve got two backups.”
Howard was the equestrian director at the Fork Stables in Norwood, North Carolina since 2006.
She notes that she’s always had a lot of horses to ride, but they’re more scarce at the upper levels.
While the London Olympics were a difficult experience for Howard and the Canadian team, they were ultimately an inspiring one for Howard.
“The Games were something I’ve been working for for so long.
“These Games in particular had such an aura, because of it being in England – London has so much history and there’s so much recognizition of our sport here. It was a big deal and you felt that. It also made it that much more disappointing when it didn’t go right. There are all those mixed emotions.
“I just want to get more horses and get more mileage…”
