JUDY Cazabon always knew her granddaughter, Alana, was going places. She turned heads since she was a tiny child on a pony, won her first Dressage Ireland national championship title aged 11 and has won over 20 titles since.

“She just had the look. People used to look at her and say ‘god look at her position’. She just sat there and it seemed to happen underneath her,” Judy said, explaining Alana’s natural connection with ponies and horses from a young age.

It is easy to tell how close the pair are as they chat back and forth while telling their story to The Irish Field when we met at Cleggan Beach Riding Centre. Judy, and her daughter Siobhan (Alana’s mother), have dedicated their lives to horses and now all their energy is going into Alana’s career as an international dressage rider.

Judy wasn’t born into a horsey family, but says the love of horses was in the blood, through her great grandfather. Born in Trindad, she is a Galwegian since the age of one, when her father, Dr Roy Cazabon, came to Ireland to study medicine in 1956. She grew up in Taylors Hill in Galway city and in the early days, would go riding once a week.

“My dad used to bring my mum and myself down to Athenry to the Daly’s and from the minute I got there, I loved them. I remember it was always on a Saturday we went down, and Saturday was always bath night. So I used to go into the bathroom, run the bath, and pretend I had a bath, so I wouldn’t get rid of the smell of the horses off my hands!” Judy explained.

“I didn’t come from a horsey background, but I do remember my grandmother showing me pictures of her father – they were French and he was allergic to the sun. They had racehorses because they had sugar plantations in Trindad, and he used to ride everywhere. It so happens I am allergic to the sun as well, believe it or not!”

Judy was married in 1973 and moved to Moycullen, just outside Galway city, where her interest in ponies developed further and her three children – Eleanor, Siobhan and Roy – arrived. Training to become an instructor, she rode her Honda 50 motorbike to John Moore’s Rockmount Riding Centre in Claregalway every morning and, after some further training with Iris Kellet, passed her exams and was soon qualified to teach.

She opened a riding school in Moycullen in 1982, starting from scratch when clearing a piece of land and eventually building an indoor arena in 1985. Her next moved was to Cashel in Connemara in ‘88, where she bought a place and did trekking from Cashel House Hotel. It was that same year that she met her partner Enda Keane, who, by all accounts, is the backbone of Cleggan Beach Riding Centre.

“I remember the late Sean Hardiman giving me a hand to bring all the ponies out,” she said fondly. In the early ‘90s, there was a demand for beach riding, so Judy and Enda began trekking from his field in Cleggan, where they now have 19 stables and an all-weather arena and offer fabulous rides to Omey Island.

“This place came up for sale then, it was a hostel at the time, and I bought it and sold the place in Cashel,” she explains about her home, next to the stable yard.

Judy Cazabon with her partner Enda Keane (left) and father Dr Roy Cazabon \ Niamh O'Dochartaigh

Connemara ponies

The first pony to ignite Judy’s love for showing Connemara’s was Drimcong Rose. She broke the Carna Bobby mare and did a huge amount of ridden and in-hand classes with much success. When Siobhan was keen to begin on the show scene, Judy made the decision to put her daughter’s passion ahead of her own.

“When Siobhan was nine or 10, she wanted to start showing and the two of us couldn’t afford to do it, so I kind of concentrated on her,” she explained. And that was a worthwhile move as Siobhan had many successful days in the saddle, and continues to do so.

She is a multiple Clifden and Dublin winner, with some of her earliest successes coming in the early ‘90s when she won aboard Mervyn Blue Tack at the Dublin Spring Show. This writer remembers Siobhan as both a teacher at the Connemara Pony Club and as a prolific winner with the beautiful mare Dríocht na Mara.

Home-bred by Judy, she was by Loobeen Larry out of Lislassick Laura, who breed plenty of useful performers, including Taibhse na Mara. At the 1997 Dublin Horse Show, Judy and Siobhan came home with three red rosettes thanks to Dríocht na Mara winning the four-year-old Connemara mare class, Aran Andy won the ridden class for Siobhan and Mervyn Blue Tack also won her mare class. “It was like all Christmases and birthdays came together!”

Generational bonding

Judy was always fond of dressage and that sparked Siobhan’s interest and has since passed onto Alana, and in more recent years, the family focus on High Performance dressage, rather than showing, as well as still running the trekking centre, although that is becoming increasingly more difficult with the rising cost of upkeep and insurance, Judy explained.

“I loved dressage, and I used to do a little bit of it years ago with Vida Tansey in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s. I remember going to meetings up the country and I would met Joan Keogh and Joey Mannion. I used to bring Siobhan then to Joey’s for a few weeks during the summer.”

Now aged 21, a young Alana was pony mad from the word go. “My mom has a picture somewhere and I am two days old and I am sitting on a horse.

"I can’t remember ever starting, it’s more like someone growing up with a second language in the house, it was always just part of the house,” she said about her earliest memories of being around horses.

“I remember in primary school when I was really small, my friend came over to the yard and she thought it smelled really bad. I didn’t realise that other children didn’t have horses; I didn’t know that was a thing! It has literally been my entire life.”

She started winning lead-reins at the age of three with the adorable Baby Face and the rosettes haven’t stopped since.

Remembering her granddaughter as a small child and her love for the horses, Judy said: “When Alana was small, if I was riding Dríocht, I would take her up in front of me and we would go for a canter around the arena.

“I remember one day sitting in here and she had gotten out the back door there and there was a pony called Thunder out on the hill and she was sitting up on the pony. She was tiny, it was way before she went to school. I looked out, there she was up on his back and he was eating grass!”

Alana was working away and achieving top results, winning national titles on ponies that were used in the trekking centre during the summer as the family couldn’t afford to buy a ready made pony. But the arrival of the special pony stallion Schermeer S Hof Arendsoog in 2014 changed the game for Alana, catapulting her into the limelight.

He took her to her first pony European Championships at Millstreet in 2014, where they finished best of the Irish, and gave her a taste at the big time.

“I had a few ponies and I was working really really hard just to get through tests. When I got Ari [Schermeer S Hof Arendsoog], I thought ‘wow this is nice’. I formed a really good relationship with him. I got a lot of attention on him, he’s so gorgeous and he is a stallion. He was a game changer for me.”

Alana Cazabon and Schermeer S Hof Arendsoog at the 2014 FEI European Pony Championships for Ponies

In July 2014, the pair were crowned the Under 21 champions at the Hickstead Masters in Britain. At the same venue, Siobhan finished second in the preliminary championship with Let It Be. “That was one of the best days of my life,” said Judy about Alana’s Hickstead win.

“I remember I got asked to do an interview with Horse & Hound, so that was cool. I was 15 getting asked to do an interview, I couldn’t believe it,” Alana added. She qualified two ponies for the 2015 European Championships in Malmö, Sweden, and opted to take the dun Maverick S, again finishing best of the Irish.

Osmosis

She attended Clifden Community School but decided against doing her Leaving Certificate to go abroad and concentrate on her riding career.

While dressage was passed down through the two generations ahead of her, there was another reason Alana was attracted to the discipline. “I was always really into natural horsemanship. In dressage, you have to have a connection with your horse otherwise nothing is going to happen so that is why I liked it. With Carn Verdon Boy, I can ride the Prix St Georges (PSG) on him with no tack. I have a connection with him and we both know the job; that is what I love about this sport.

“I didn’t finished school. I moved away, I was just so into it. I didn’t want to be stressing about not having done my homework done on the way to an international. There was nothing else I wanted to do, this was my main thing. I thought it should be my main focus,” Alana explained.

That move was to Leunus van Lieren’s Stall Hexagon in The Netherlands where she brought three horses and learned heaps.

"What I really benefitted from there was the ‘big fish, small pond’ thing! There was so many people over there that were so much better than me.

"I learned so much from the girls I was working with. My job was to ride the horses and from just watching the others ride, it was like osmosis. That is what is really good, being around people that you want to be like. It batters your ego but it is good for you!”

Wonder pony

While in Holland, the talent of the Connemara ‘wonder pony’ Carn Verdon Boy, known as Darcy at home, came to the fore. Too old to compete in the pony grades, Alana was forced to compete against the horses, and she beat them, winning a Medium Freestyle with a score of 78%.

The pair’s record together is quite remarkable, and the 14.2hh Ferdia gelding, owned by Deirdre and Joan Geoghegan, holds his own against the horses. Just before the sport stopped in March, the gelding broke new ground for Connemara’s, competing in his first Intermediate I and winning with 64.85%.

The Cazabon family are incredibly fond of Darcy who, as previously mentioned can perform the PSG without any tack. “He just enjoys it. You teach him something and it’s as if you see him thinking, ‘okay I know what I have to do here’. You can almost read his thoughts. I don’t know any other horse that is like that. I have other trainable horses but he is amazing,” Alana said.

“He is absolutely lovely to work with. And I think it is important; some people do have the idea that ‘oh he is a pony’ but if he is correct and doesn’t make mistakes, why shouldn’t he be judged on the same lines as a horse?” Judy added.

Her other top horse is the 16-year-old KWPN gelding Zazou who took her to the 2017 Junior European championships and her first international win in Biarritz. Nationally, they have won more competitions than I can count.

“He has given us the best of days and the worst,” Judy said. “Temperament wise, if he is in the right frame of mind and nothing spooks him, you are away on a hack because his paces are so good. Even with the odd mistake, you are going to get a very good score. But if he sees something and decides he doesn’t like it… that’s it!”

That best day came in Biarritz when she won the junior competition with a score of 67.52%. “They were playing the national anthem and the Irish flag was going up and the tears were falling down my face. I remember saying ‘I am going to relish this, because they don’t come very often!’” her very proud grandmother said.

Judy thoroughly enjoys accompanying Alana to shows, where she is her main trainer. But competing at a high level from the West of Ireland is a challenge. Cleggan is 88km from Galway City, with most venues another three to four hours from there.

“It is an hour and half to Galway and add three hours on to your journey then no matter what. So you might be five hours in the lorry, another five hours at the show and five hours home then, it is hard work.”

Would Alana ever think of going abroad again? “Yes, but at the same time, I have quite a lot of horses here. If I just had one horse, I could pack up and take my one horse and go somewhere with good grass and an indoor arena. But when you have six or seven horses to produce, it is more difficult to leave,” the youngster said.

Apart from her granny and mother, Alana credits Donie McNamara, Vida Tansey, Anne Marie Dunphy and international riders Jeannette Haazen, Peter Storr, Jennie Loriston-Clarke and Judy Reynolds as great mentors and trainers through the years. She is also grateful to Ower Equestrian Centre who allow her to use their indoor facilities.

“The best thing we have discovered since lockdown is getting Zoom lessons. It is just the same as if Judy was talking to me through the earpiece. It is good to get another set of eyes every so often. Only during the week I got a lesson from Judy Reynolds and Donie McNamara has been a great support. Vida Tansey has always been helpful but she does a lot of judging now so I can’t train with her as much. You need more than one or two people. If Judy was looking at me every day, if there is a problem, you get used to it or get blind to it,” Alana said.

She is also very quick to credit Enda who does a lot of hard grafting. “We wouldn’t be doing what we are doing if it wasn’t for Enda. He is the backbone of everything.”

Alana Cazabon with her horse Zazou at home in Cleggan, Connemara \ Judith Faherty

On the continent

Like all equestrian sports, there is a lot of money involved in the sport of dressage. “If you are not a millionaire, it is so hard. You have to go on luck,” said Alana, before Judy added: “I remember someone saying to me long ago – talent isn’t enough, money isn’t enough and luck isn’t enough, you need all three.

“We have been to shows on the continent and when you see the money…I was parked up beside these fabulous lorries and I’d have the little Toyota Land Cruiser that is outside there with a horse box at the back of it, parking up beside these unbelievable things,” she said with a laugh. “You’d nearly be kicking yourself thinking, ‘what am I doing here, I can’t compete with these!’”

And there is one funny story from their international exploits, when their lorry broke down on the German border with Judy Reynolds and show jumper Bertram Allen coming to the rescue.

“Judy Reynolds was so helpful to us…We were driving from France to Poland and we broke down just on the German border. Judy got us sorted, got the horses to her place. She asked me did I want to take her lorry, but I had no licence for a lorry, so then she says, ‘I’ll ring Bertram, he will probably have something’, so the next thing, a brand new Roelofsen two-horse truck arrives at the yard for me to drive down to Poland. It had barely been used! They even put us up at the yard for two or three days, she was really so good to us,” Judy explained.

Alana is into the senior ranks now and was disappointed to miss her last shot at a young rider Europeans. Due to Covid-19 and the change of venue, they decided to side step the championships even though she had qualified with Zazou. “They changed the Europeans to Hungary from Hartpury in England. Of all the years, it would have cost a lot and just wasn’t feasible,” she said.

But this 21-year-old has big goals. Seeing the hard work she puts in on a cold and wet winter’s day in Connemara, there is no doubt she will feature in these pages for many years to come.