Alexandra Duncan: "My goal is to qualify for the Olympics in London"

The Anky Education Center has many international training clients. Canadian dressage rider Alexandra Duncan trains with Anky since January last year. Her goal is to compete at the Olympics in London, next year.

The 21-year-old Alexandra Duncan is originally from Vancouver (CAN) but lives in Uden (NED) at the moment. Before she came to The Netherlands, she trained with Jan Brink in Sweden. She brought the Ferro-offspring Vitall with her. This ten-year-old KWPN gelding is an easy horse to ride. Alexandra told us more about her daily routine. “Every morning, I look after him and walk him in-hand. Than Anky tells me what time I can train with her, so I basically train with her every day. Once a week, Vitall has a day off. In the evening, I walk Vitall in-hand again and every day, I graze him too. The most important during my training is the basics. Every day I work on this in combination with some exercises. Because I’m preparing for the Grand Prix, I also train the basic elements like the attention, straightness and speed control during the Grand Prix exercises.”

One week ago, she trained alone because Anky was on holiday. “It was nice to ride alone. Than you need to feel things and solve small ‘problems’ by your own. Vitall’s strengths are piaffe and passage. He is really easy to ride in these exercises. My goal is to qualify for the Olympics in London 2012. I will compete at several CDI’s in France and Poland because I need to score 67% three times in order to qualify for the Canadian Team. Many Young Riders go to Grand Prix level this year and will try to qualify as well so now we have a lot of potentials in Canada.”

Every Monday, she writes a blog for Horse Canada. The money she gets for writing her blog she gives to a Canadian Para-Equestrian dressage rider, who is trying to qualify for the Paralympics Games in London 2012.