Choosing Colours

The beauty of Eventing is that for cross country you can choose the colours that you ride in.  Of course you can ride in just a random shirt.  But why ride in any old shirt when you can have a shirt that matches your helmet cover - with a pom pom! - which then matches your saddle blanket, horse boots, headstall and an assortment of rugs?  You can even change that "shirt" for "silks".

Now, at HRCAV competitions we are still bound by our club colours, but once you hit EA, the world is your oyster as far as cross country colours are concerned.

I am not one to get the odd rug here, and the odd headstall there simply because they were on special.  I like all my gear to match, and to follow a consistent theme - for all my horses.  So I've been playing around with colour combinations for years!

When I did the Dream Team last year, we did an exercise where you close your eyes and imagine a situation, and then you identify sounds, smells, feels and colours with these situations.  I could identify sounds and smells, but they didn't seem that important to me.  Colour, on the other hand, was very important.  We went through various situations, and each time I associated a different colour.

Our Dream Team guide and guru strongly suggested that we should include the "right" colours in our riding attire - to calm us, inspire us, and give us our very best results.  Hmmm ... good idea.

I had narrowed down my colour combinations to about three.  Not three colours ... three different colour schemes.  Choosing between those seemed impossible.  Scheme one included light blue, navy and cream, and made me feel calm, peaceful and harmonious.  Scheme two included browns and beiges and a bit of black, was elegant and looked well on the horses.  Scheme three included navy, red and gold and left me motivated, inspired and full of life.

I gazed at the colours forever.  Why couldn't I have all three schemes, and dig them out when I felt like it?  I kept looking at one scheme, noting how it made me feel, then looking at the next scheme and comparing how my feelings changed.  What did I actually want to feel when I was at a competition?  What did I need at a competition to achieve my best?  I started wondering whether I needed a different colour scheme for home, and a different one for competing?

Sometimes, it's so much easier when the rules are just set down for you, as in Dressage and Showjumping.

In the end, the navy, red and gold scheme won.  At a competition, when you may have had a busy week preparing, an early morning to get there, you need to feel motivated, inspired and full of life!

I've already purchased the headstalls.  Now to slowly acquire a set of rugs.