Tal­ent­ed and de­ter­mined Michelle Sab­ga Aboud made his­to­ry on Ju­ly 9, as T&T’s first rid­er to com­plete the ad­vanced In­ter­me­di­ate I dres­sage test at com­pe­ti­tion lev­el at Jeri­cho Sta­bles in St Ann’s.

This was the start of the T&T Eques­tri­an As­so­ci­a­tion (TTEA) Dres­sage League 2 com­pe­ti­tion which ran un­til last Sun­day (Ju­ly 12).

"This has been a life­long dream of mine! How­ev­er, things did not al­ways go ac­cord­ing to plan. I was lucky enough to have a sol­id foun­da­tion with my coach­es both in Trinidad and aboard and with my horse Take Over who is an ad­vanced lev­el dres­sage horse," said the 19-year-old Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol stu­dent, who has been rid­ing for sev­en years.

"I at­tempt­ed to go for it in Welling­ton, Flori­da but that did not end up work­ing out. Nev­er­the­less, the time spent there shaped me in­to the rid­er I am to­day. It wasn’t un­til the own­er of Bis­coito, Luisa Fer­nan­des and a clin­i­cian, Maria In­es who were here at the time, saw the po­ten­tial in me and pushed me to aim high­er and go fur­ther,

"How­ev­er, I re­al­ly want­ed to set­tle in­to Uni­ver­si­ty first and see what life was like with­out hors­es – for any­one won­der­ing – it’s no good! Af­ter tak­ing a year off from rid­ing and feel­ing like a piece of me was miss­ing, I de­cid­ed to bite the bul­let and re­sume. This time I was more de­ter­mined than ever to ac­com­plish my life­long dreams, ir­re­spec­tive of the sig­nif­i­cant time and en­er­gy com­mit­ments this prac­tice de­mands.

"I did not ex­pect to be in Trinidad right now, and to be train­ing and com­pet­ing Bis­coito at this ad­vanced lev­el, but some­times life throws you some un­ex­pect­ed, but very wel­comed sur­pris­es!"

Al­so, Sab­ga Aboud on Sun­day rode the Prix St Georges (au con­cours or non com­pet­i­tive­ly) at San An­to­nio Sta­bles in San­ta Cruz and be­came the third Trinida­di­an to com­plete this test to date. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Mar­garet “Muffy” Auer­bach rode the In­ter­me­di­ate 1 test once be­fore on her horse Fer­rari for demon­stra­tion pur­pos­es on­ly.

At the Prix St Georges lev­el, Patrice Stollmey­er, the cur­rent TTEA pres­i­dent along with Auer­bach were the on­ly two oth­er Trinida­di­ans to have com­pet­ed at this lev­el.

Sab­ga Aboud's jour­ney be­gan at the now-closed Good­win Heights Sta­bles with “Muffy” Auer­bach and Sara Mc­Cart­ney. Dur­ing which her pas­sion for hors­es grew quick­ly.

"I was ac­cept­ed in­to a pro­gramme in Welling­ton, Flori­da with Olympian Lendon Gray. It was a fan­tas­tic learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for me. How­ev­er, I learnt a lot of hard life lessons and all did not go ac­cord­ing to plan. I moved back home in Sep­tem­ber 2018 for a gap year be­fore com­menc­ing my de­gree in 2019.

Dur­ing her first year at Uni­ver­si­ty, she al­lowed her­self time to set­tle in­to her new life, tak­ing a year off from rid­ing. She now based in Eng­land and (pre-COVID) train­ing with Pam­my and Pip­pa Hut­ton at The Tal­land School of Eq­ui­tation.

"Since my re­turn to Trinidad, I have con­tin­ued my train­ing with them via Zoom. With their out­stand­ing com­mit­ment to me and coach­ing skills, I have gone from rid­ing the third lev­el to school­ing the Grand Prix," said Sab­ga Aboud, who is hop­ing to be back in Eng­land for the start of the new school term and back train­ing in per­son with her coach­es Pam­my and Pip­pa.

“They are the per­fect com­ple­ments of each oth­er, and work as a team in every­thing they do – a fan­tas­tic com­bi­na­tion of a moth­er-daugh­ter duo! Pam­my re­al­ly works on push­ing me past my com­fort zone in every ride and al­ways rais­es the bar of what she ex­pects from me.

"Pip­pa, on the oth­er hand, fo­cus­es on per­fect­ing the de­tails and my con­fi­dence on dif­fer­ent hors­es as this is some­thing I re­al­ly strug­gle with. I am be­yond blessed that they have put so much time and love in­to me and that I am able to train with the best.”

Sab­ga Aboud, de­scribed by the TTEA as a phe­nom­e­nal in­spi­ra­tion for younger rid­ers and her peers, is al­so re­gard­ed as a su­perb rep­re­sen­ta­tion and pro­vides a pos­i­tive and bright out­look for the fu­ture of eques­tri­an, lo­cal­ly.

"My hap­pi­ness is chas­ing my dreams of be­com­ing the best ver­sion of my­self. How­ev­er, no mat­ter how close I am to this goal, this goal keeps evolv­ing as I can al­ways do bet­ter. I have some pret­ty big goals!" she said.

"Who knows what the next few years will hold, but as my next step, I hope to be com­pet­ing at the Grand Prix lev­el as my ul­ti­mate dream is the Olympic Games."