Rides Racehorse In Show Ring

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31000, 4 March 1966, Page 2

Rides Racehorse In Show Ring

Fifteen years ago, at Tamworth, in New South Wales, a little girl rider with blonde curls made her first appearance in the show ring. Mounted on her 11-hand pony called Dimples, Helen Murchison, then only four, did not win the blue ribbon.

Perhaps the judge guessed that the little rider would go far. but she had a long way to ride before she won selection to the Australian show jumping team last year. At 19. and just a year out of school. Helen is the youngest member of the Australian team, at present competing in Christchurch. She is modest about her success. Riding for her is a hobby and a pleasure, and she has no wish to become professional When she was 14, she went to California with the first Australian pony club team ever to leave the country. In California, she was individually fourth in the one-day dressage event. It was about this time that she acquired Ramona, her black show-jumping mare, which she has brought to New Zealand. Ramona and her five team-maites. Alfred P. Doolittle, High Thane, Bundanoon. Brandy, and Yourilla, travelled to New Zealand bv sea. When purchased Ramona was already a “career girl” in her own right for she had

just retired from the race track. The black mare was renamed Ramona by Helen’s mother when she was purchased for show jumping. The name stemi from the pop song which was a hit-parader at the time. Miss Murchison is not sure if Ramona was particularly successful on the galloping track, but can vouch for her success in the show ring. Horse and rider worked their way steadily around the shows until they won a national reputation at the Sydney Royal Show last year. There Miss Murchison won the puissance and table A events and was a member of the New South Wales team which won the interstate jumping competition. Countrybred Helen prefers country life and lives and works on her parents’ 3000acre property in Tamworth. Her three show horses are exercised daily. “They must be exercised each day, either for wind or schooling, but not both,” she said. It would only be natural for such a successful rider to set herself a still higher goal. For Miss Murchison the next hurdle will be an attempt to win selection to the Olympic team travelling to Mexico in 1968.