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Zambian Rachel Howard, who runs a busy yard near Lusaka, heard about vaulting when she met Karen McGowan, who is busy trying to establish vaulting in Malawi, at an FEI coaching course.
She was immediately fascinated, and asked Riba Vaulting Club for help. Riba sent Jasyn Gertenbach, South Africa’s most successful international vaulter, to her.
He spent three days at the beginning of July at Rachel’s yard, showing them the basics on barrels and helping to identify suitable horses to bring on as vaulting horses.
Over thirty interested and enthusiastic children attended his sessions, and they found two horses that seem to have the right build and temperament to become vaulting horses.
It is wonderful to see someone so enthusiastic about our discipline, and hope to see Zambia at the Inter-Africa Cup next year!
The first vaulting lesson in Zambia!
Good warm up...
Let's start on the barrel :)
The first Zambian vaulting horse ;)
This is the way to teach your vaulters to land SOFTLY !!!
Bunty on her own "vaulting horse"
More vaulting in Zambia
Zambia began vaulting only in early July when Jasyn Gertenbach spent a long weekend there to introduce them to the basics. When Agata Pekala visited them only two months they had improved in their exercises and work on the barrel, and knew their compulsory routines.
They have also started training a horse for vaulting, and here we see her with her new surcingle: the FEI had given Barbie Gertenbach, FEI Development Officer (Vaulting) for the Group IX Countries, a grant to buy surcingles for the new vaulting clubs that are starting in various Group IX countries and also Soweto, and Zambia was one of the beneficiaries.
And more ......................
Barbie Gertenbach visited Zambia from 20 to 24 September. She found that, after just a few weeks, they had been practising hard and were doing quite good E-grade compulsories. Their vaulting horse, Indian Rose, is coming on well and displaying a tolerant temperament as they learn to vault on her. The club has a core of dedicated and enthusiastic vaulters and (which is probably more important) vaulting parents. They are determined to be part of the Inter-Africa Cup next year, so we can look forward to an exciting tournament.
Silke Jens in Zambia...
From 19 January to 17 March 2008 Silke Jens, from Germany, went to Zambia to help Rachel Howard coach her young vaulters. While she was there, Silke increased vaulting practices from Wednesday to nearly every day in the week, and also trained vaulting horses nearly every morning. Rachel’s vaulters now have three nice vaulting horses and ponies: Indian Rose, Jay’s Kingdom and Topaz – a new pony whom the small kids take straight to their hearts, and who is just beginning canter work. While in Zambia, Silke also made a vaulting pad out of yoga mats, so that the kids could get used to normal pads: when she got back to Johannesburg, she immediately started to sew covers and make more pads.
Clubhouse and School
Housepet :)
Agata Pekala came and helped Silke Jens... here with the small Team
After three weeks’ hard work, we could see that Zambia has a lot of talented kids: they had so much fun and were so enthusiastic to go to IAC. Agata Pekala, the previous coach at Riba, came twice during the eight weeks to help and visit Silke. She gave the kids great ideas for freestyles and music. They also ran a small competition, which Agata judged. It was a great experience for the kids to compete in front of people and learn to vault when they nervous.
double block from small Team on Barrel
Topaz the new Vaulting-Pony with Rachel Howard and Maja
small team, last block :)
Agata glued the mats on the Barrel
Silke Jens, small Team and Rachel Howard after they first competition
Topaz
Elsa doing her chesthang
Ava in splitstand in loop
Bjoern does Compulsory flag
Claritta in her freestyle bwd. bench
Chisomo does complsory push up
Emma in her freestyle shoulderstand
Rachel took Silke to Livingstone Waterfalls for a weekend so that
she could see more of Zambia. Silke says, “We saw a lot of wild
animals. We went on a ‘booze cruise’ and visited the Crocodile
Park. The highlight before we went home was to go bungee
jumping from the bridge. It was very scary but after the jump it
was fun.”
After six weeks Silke had prepare three individual vaulting teams:
1: Emma Dollery, Sophie Miller, Philip Chalcraft and Bjoern Dahl-Dhen
2: Elsa Chalcraft, Ava Mc Robb, Kirsty and Phillipa Hawke
3: Chisomo Mbale, Cloritta Peters, Willo Bicknees and Bunty Howard here...
Livingstone Waterfalls
Crocodile Park
Rachel, Alistar, Bunty Howard with Silke Jens
The vaulters all began training six days a week to get fit and ready for IAC, and did a lot of barrel work with music and choreographies. To raise money for the kids to pay for their flights and rent a car in Johannesburg, they ran two vaulting shows, sold cakes, and did a fund-raising outride which took the form of a five-hour ride with a picnic in the bush.
Silke Jens doing the bungee jump
Fund Rase
And then it was time for Silke to leave Zambia, and for the vaulters and their parents to travel to SA and show what they had learned in eight weeks. Silke’s teams did very well, achieving 2nd, 8th and 11th places in the E-grade class (which had 16 team entries), and Silke has some wonderful memories of a beautiful country.
