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Would you like to pay a tribute to Cherry
Send us your stories and memories.
And photographs, if you have any.
Horseytalk.net Special Interview
Cherry Michell

www.pcuk.org

Cherry MichellOver 50,000 members aged between approximately 6 and 25-years-old

More than 10,000 volunteers who help with everything from the paperwork to building cross-country jumps

345 Pony Club Branches

530 associated riding schools (Pony Club Centres) regularly attended by 15,000 non-pony owning riders

345 District Commissioners

34 Equestrian Council members

14 full-time staff headed by chief executive, Judy Edwards

9 members of the Board of Trustees.

Not to mention son-in-law, Alex, who as a member of The Honourable Artilery Company, the T.A. unit of The City of London, has served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has seen first hand the horrific injuries that some of our servicemen suffer both physically and mentally.

You can all now breathe a sigh of relief.
She did it.

Cherry with daughter Emma and Tom BoyThe Chairman of The Pony Club, Cherry Michell (pronounced Mitchell) completed the Horses4 Heroes sponsored ride, the biggest sponsored ride ever organised in this country, which started at Ascot racecourse, took in Windsor Great Park and ended with the unique experience of galloping past the winning post on Ascot’s hallowed turf.
And she did it without any aches or pains or bruises or worse even though it was the first riding she had done for 5 years.

In one hour and 20 minutes.

<< Cherry with daughter Emma and Tom Boy

Cherry was so lucky that Hattie Cripps who has just retired as District Commissioner of The Romney Marsh Branch of The Pony Club lent her Tom Boy, a 16.3 dun gelding, 18-years-old, who had been Hattie’s daughter Joanna’s Pony Club horse, and who now gives Hattie great pleasure as her hack.

Cherry had only ridden him for just an hour on the previous Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. All her riding gear, she’d bought from the sales rails at Badminton. And the previous week while sorting out the hay barn for the new crop on the family farm at Robertsbridge in East Sussex, she had stupidly pulled a bale of hay from the bottom of the stack and had about 100 bales fall on top of her this resulted in a 5 ½ hour wait at the A and E Department at the Conquest Hospital in Hastings on a Friday night ! Luckily the damage was a pulled ligament not broken ribs.

Cherry  and Tom BoyWhat’s more she expects to raise over £2,000 in sponsorship, over double her previous estimate.

“It was wonderful. Amazing. I loved every minute of it,” she says. “I don’t think anyone could have been happier than I was when I rode along the Chase course and past the winning post. It was thrilling. What’s more, it’s renewed my enthusiasm for riding. I’m determined I’m now going to carry on riding. Nothing will stop me now. I‘ve been inspired”

Accompanying Cherry on the ride was her daughter, Emma Ainslie, an ex eventer who now has three children under five. She was riding her old event horse, All is Well, known as Bob, an 18-year-old Irish thoughbred on whom she had completed the Windsor Three Day Event which was held in the Great Park. She is now determined to take up Team Chasing with Bob.

Cherry and Emma ready to set offSays Cherry, “It was a big day. We were up at 5am. We loaded all the gear and all the children into the rather elderly horsebox - not to mention one reluctant husband. We left at 6am.

“First we had to go to Sandhurst in Kent to pick up Tom Boy.

“We got to Ascot about 10, registered and tacked-up. I climbed on to the lorry step and dropped on to poor Tom. Then we were off. We were in one of the last groups to leave and there was a deadline for being allowed to finish by galloping on the Racecourse because proper racing was due to start at 2p.m. therefore there was no hanging about  and Emma and I did finish in time to gallop with Andrew Finding, the British Equine Federation Chief Executive.

“We went through the tunnel, across the road and into the woods beside Ascot golf course. We crossed another road and went into Windsor Great Park.

“We went along the track where the three-day event course used to be, looking down into Deer Park. We were at the top of the long walk. Straight ahead of us was Windsor Castle. We turned right towards Ascot and then had this amazing gallop along the edge of the Great Park. It was the first time in five years Big Tom had gone that fast. He loved it and So did I.

“Then it was back to the Golden Gate, through the tunnel, on to the racecourse proper at the 1 ½ furlong mark and the gallop to the finish on the Chase course. I don’t think anyone was smiling more than I was at that time.”

Not that there was ever any doubt that Cherry would do it. For she is not only a born rider, she was also born into The Pony Club.

Her mother was a Member of the West Kent Branch of The Pony Club. Her sister and her went to the Romney Marsh Branch as did Emma her daughter and her three grandchildren will join next year

She was still a baby when she first sat on a pony.
“I remember her,” she says. “She was the butcher’s pony from Tonbridge. Thirty-years-old. A mare. A Shetland. She bit at one end and kicked at the other. But I loved her.”

From being an ordinary Member, Cherry has risen to the top of The Pony Club.

From 1989 to 1998 she was District Commissioner of the Romney Marsh Branch of The Pony Club. In l998 she became one of the nineteen Area Representatives who cover the U.K.as well as a Trustee. In 2004 she became Vice-Chairman and in 2008, Chairman

Cherry and Emma ready for the ride.

“I’ve loved every minute of it,” she says. “I hope the Members have as well.”
Since becoming Chairman, Cherry has not only stream-lined the organisation and speeded up the decision-making process, she has also sharpened its focus.

“The Pony Club is there to produce the Olympic champions of tomorrow,” she says. “We’re a training organisation. We’re there to train every young person who loves horses and ponies not only in riding but how to look after them properly. Not only can our Members train for the Olympic Disciplines of Eventing , Show Jumping and Dressage but they can also have a go at Polo, Polocrosse, Mounted Games, Tetrathlon (Modern Petathlon without the fencing phase) Racing and now Enduraance which I introduced last year.

“We’re competitive but our competitions are there to prove that we’ve got our training right. And that children are ready to progress to the next stage. Get that right and we’ll continue producing the champions of tomorrow.”

But don’t say a word, what Cherry is more proud of than anything at the moment is the fact, she is convinced, The Pony Club was behind the whole idea of the sponsored ride for Horses4Heroes.

Cherry Michell with Tom Boy“We gave them the germ of the idea,” she says. “We’ve organised three sponsored rides at Ascot. We organised a ride to mark the Millenium. We organised a ride to mark the 75th anniversary of The Pony Club. We also organised a ride to mark 30 years of DAKS sponsorship at Royal Windsor Horse Show and The Pony Club’s 80th Anniversary These rides have always raised a lot of money for The Air Ambulance and The Royal British Legion.

“We’ve used the stabling at Ascot. We’ve also ridden through Windsor Great Park with the Queen’s permission.”
Which just goes to prove that somewhere or other, behind every successful rider and every successful equine event in the country, there is always The Pony Club.

Click here to see who else finished the ride.

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