Thanks, Coach! - Jan Pike to Gillian Rickard
Issue: Volume 27 Number 4
Take a woman with cerebral palsy who had never before ridden a horse at trotting pace, introduce her to a specialist dressage coach who had never before coached an athlete with a disability and what do you get? The answer is World Championship and Paralympic medals.
When Paralympic equestrian medallist Jan Pike and her coach Gillian Rickard first met in 1999, it was to spark a fundamental change for them both.
Jan, whose experience was limited to social riding with her local Riding for the Disabled Association, had decided to lease a horse from Taree to improve her riding skills. The horse did not settle in well to its new agistment not far from Jan’s Winston Hill home in New South Wales. Jan was distraught and sought help from Australian equestrian squad Chef d’equipe (team manager) Judy Cubitt.
Judy recommended that she contact Gillian Rickard, who was then Australian Assistant Coach and owned a property at Kurrajong, 45 minutes from Jan.
Jan recalls approaching Gillian with trepidation. ‘I knew that she had represented Australia and was at quite a high level with [coaching] the Australian squad and I was a bit in awe of her,’ says Jan.
‘I arranged to agist Otto, my horse, with Gill and she suggested that I have a lesson with her once a week. She said when I first started that she’d never had a rider with a disability before and that we’d have to “play it by ear”.’
‘Playing it by ear’ meant starting from scratch, literally. Jan’s cerebral palsy quadriplegia affects all four of her limbs. She has little use in her left hand, some movement in her right and tends to have difficulty controlling her arms and legs and keeping her seat and balance on a horse.
‘When I started with Gill, no one had ever been game enough to let me trot on a horse,’ Jan says. ‘Gill’s philosophy was “well, you can only fall off” but I think that if she tells you the story, she’ll tell you that she had her eyes closed the whole time I first got the horse up to trot.’
From there the pair gradually upped the training to work on Jan’s endurance and technique and Gillian introduced her to more mature horses. Within the first year of their meeting, Jan had been accepted in the Paralympic preparation program and was later chosen as a reserve for the Sydney 2000 Paralympics.
‘After that, Gill took me aside and asked me what my goals were and I said I wanted to go to Athens. She told me I’d have to really get stuck into training and we began training three times a week,’ Jan says.
In 2002, Gillian decided to go back to university to study to become a vet, yet she still found time for Jan’s training schedule.
‘That is the amazing thing about this woman. She put her business on hold, she fitted training in around her studies, she made enormous sacrifices and yet still managed to run squad camps and to go out of her way to give us the optimum amount of her time,’ Jan says. ‘Gill loves a challenge.’
Part of that challenge has been finding new ways for the 52-year-old athlete to improve her technique, adapting equipment, changing breathing patterns and being more body conscious.
‘Gill was a PE instructor and she has a Bachelor of Education, so she has a great awareness of the body,’ Jan says. ‘She thinks about things. Her philosophy is not to look at what I can’t do, but what I can do functionally with a bit of help.’
Safety was the first consideration and Gillian has variously used velcro, elastic and braces to keep Jan’s involuntary movements to a minimum and to help keep her back straight and prevent her from leaning in the saddle.
‘She spends a lot of time coming up with ideas and thinking about how we can do things better,’ Jan says. ‘She’s a pretty serious person. There’s not a lot of time for mucking around.
‘You know when she’s not happy with what you’re doing because the first sign is she stands with her hands clasped behind her back. But equally when she tells you you’ve done well, you know you’ve really done well.
‘I don’t mind saying that there have been times with Gill when I’ve left training in tears thinking that she has no idea of what I’m going through, but equally many times I’ve opened the gate and been jumping in the air like the Toyota ad. She just wants you to live up to your potential.’
That potential was realised at the Markopoulo Olympic Equestrian Centre at the Athens Paralympics this year when Jan, riding Dr Doulittle, a horse that Gillian also uses for able-bodied competition, claimed her first Paralympic silver medal in the individual championship and then followed it with bronze in the freestyle.
‘I could never in my wildest dreams have imagined my results,’ says Jan. ‘I went hoping and praying for a medal but when I got there the organisers had combined two grades, and instead of only competing against riders in Grade 1 with spasm and involuntary movement, I would also be competing against Grade 1B riders who have more control. This meant there were 17 riders in the field.
‘I figured that Dr D and I could only do what we could do. Gill warmed him up for me and then she walked beside me before leaving the arena. She was the last person I saw as I went into the test and the first person I saw when I finished. She was grinning from ear to ear and I knew I had done well.’
The pair will now have more hard work in front of them preparing for the 2007 World Championships in England, followed by the Beijing Paralympics, but Jan says that what has ‘blossomed into a wonderful partnership and friendship’ between the two will stand up through any tough times.
‘Some people may be put off by her frankness and find her a bit scary,’ Jan says of Gillian. ‘But peel away those layers and she is the most compassionate and caring person who loves and respects and cares for her animals. She’s inspiring and a lot of people don’t get a chance to see that. I’m one of the fortunate people who do.’
