Equestrian
Chennai's Kavya Gopal wins 2 gold medals from Junior Equestrian Nationals
Sharing a brilliant kinship with horses, Kavya Gopal made ripples by winning 2 gold medals in the Young Dressage category at the Junior Nationals.
At just 12 years of age, Chennai's Kavya Gopal started horse-riding. Being a lover of animals, she started to enjoy riding day by day. With time she realized that this is such a unique sport where the bonding with the horse and the rider have to click to make the partnership so incredible. Riding many different horses in her growing years has made her experientially understand the temperament of each horse and also learn from each one of them, which has been an intangible growth in building the partnership.
Making ripples with her latest feats, Kavya bagged 2 gold medals from the 2021 Junior Nationals Equestrian Championship (JNEC) in the individual and team 'Young Dressage Rider' category, and she plans on keeping this momentum going and taking new and higher leaps in 2022.
She is a member of "Chennai Equitation Centre" (CEC), where she rides every day. With time, she was blessed to have her own horse 'Supreme Quest". "He is super amazing," says Kavya and he has taught her immensely and indeed molded her into a much better rider. However, the partnership becomes stronger only with the blessing of having an amazing coach as well. With Supreme Quest coming into her life, she was also blessed to have Ms.Isabelle as her coach to handhold and groom her into a better rider and also train her horse to build an amazing partnership.
For the past four years, she has been participating in the Junior Nationals Equestrian Championship (JNEC), through qualifying for the same in regional selections competitions. The year 2020 JNEC was her first experience of a National medal where she won Team Silver in the Young Rider dressage category.
There has been so much learning that she has gained from her past failures, with the guidance of her coach, which has shaped her to be a mentally stronger person, building up her confidence.
The 2021 JNEC had been a very rewarding and overwhelming experience. She is ever grateful to God for blessing her with an amazing wonderful partnership with "Sechs Richtige" for the past six months. Their partnership (Sechs Richtige & Kavya) clicked in no time with the complete guidance and training of Isabelle. In fact, with time it became such a team bonding "Sechs Richtige -Isabelle-Kavya".
JNEC 2021 was held in Mumbai on 24th December where she participated in the "Young Rider dressage category" and won the individual gold medal with an impressive score of 73.3475 and a team gold medal.
Their partnership "Sechs Richtige & Kavya" in the competition was so very graceful which gave her a moment to cherish for a lifetime. She was in tears of joy as she walked out of the competition arena. She can never thank Isabelle - her coach, enough for the kind of emotional support and positive encouragement she has been, beyond being a great coach.