Lissa Green – Forging her own path

 

Lissa Bay

All photos used with permission for this story

Talking to Lissa Green you could at times, for a moment, close your eyes and swear it was her famous mother Lucinda talking, especially when she’s describing her horses, but a quick and very English self-deprecating wit, a ready laugh, an innate politeness and general charm define a personality that is completely her own. Although we’ve never met before I immediately feel as if I’ve known her for ages, keep her talking for far too long and hope that we’ll remain friends even after this interview is over – I’m sure she has this effect on everyone, not just me, she’s simply delightful!

Lissa has been riding since “Forever, I used to go round on the front of Mum and Dad’s saddles!” and as the daughter of a less than Pony Club mother myself, it would have been my dream come true to have Lucinda Green fulfill that role for me, the ultimate Pony Club mother fantasy realised, but Lissa tells me in real life it wasn’t so at all. Did she appreciate what she had?

“NO! Absolutely not! Not for a long time!  I was definitely taught by the Pony Club up until the time I was about sixteen. Maybe because I’m the youngest and I’ve always wanted to do things my way rather than conform to what everyone in my family is doing, and that’s probably another reason why it took me so long to work out that I wanted to do horses. It took me a long time to accept her help, and obviously I had to in the end because you always need your parents’ help growing up, but now that I’ve matured  a little bit more I love her coming over, and she rides my babies with me, and she helps me with the young ones doing little skinnies and fun plays in the arena and stuff like that, and she’s a very good groom at competitions!  We got quite a nice system going this summer, I’d go and groom for her at a competition and then she’d return the favour.  If I ask for her help in the warm-up then she’s more than happy to give her opinion; she’ll give me little pieces of advice like tell me to do some transitions from walk to canter or canter to walk to get him sitting, but she’s not too vocal luckily as I don’t know if I could handle that!”

But Lissa, your mother is a legend! She’s won Badminton six times – what are your special memories of the event? Shouldn’t they have awarded you ‘keys to the city’?!  Again, Lissa laughs,

“I remember going to Badminton and thinking I could jump all those cross country fences on my 12.2hh pony!  I’ve often thought about how much extra pressure I’ll put on myself being there and in the surrounding environment competing there now, but at the same time I keep telling myself it won’t be any different from being anywhere else because it will be just another event with my parents, with the same horse that I’m on, and hopefully it will just be another competition.  Obviously I’ll let you know! That would be the plan that I envision though, that it’s just another event that we’re going to try and do our best at.”

 

Lissa leading horse
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After University and a job in telesales last winter in Bristol, Lissa has decided to bite the bullet and try and make her career in professional eventing,

“I never really threw myself into it before now, I never really had more than one horse, maybe two if I was lucky here and there so it was just kind of half and half. I’d never really gone full pelt into it, I loved enjoying it as a hobby but I’d never really improved because I suppose I was scared that if I really tried and failed then I would have felt like an even bigger failure.”

Her ambitions are lofty and include all the big four star events and of course representing her country, but she’s also realistic, “Oh God, I’d love to but I’m not an idiot, I know it’s very, very difficult, especially in Britain, they’ve got so many people who are so good and I’m a million miles off that but I’d love to do it one day.”

 

Last March she moved into her  own rented yard of six stables, four of which are currently filled, and told me it’s been a fantastic experience,

“It’s been amazing and so nice to have that sense of freedom, and selfishly everything you’re doing is for yourself! I’ve worked in quite a few yards and they’ve been unbelievable and I’ve learnt so much everywhere I’ve gone, but it’s so nice that everything I’m doing, every horse I’m riding is making progress for my future, it’s for what I want to do. I’m making all my own choices and doing it all my own way and it’s so nice to have that kind of control over my life which I don’t think I’ve ever really had before. Although this year competitively has been a nightmare with so much being cancelled it’s probably been a blessing for me because it’s meant I’ve been able to slow everything down a bit, and give my babies a couple of weeks off here and there to get their brains back in order and take the pressure off them.”

Jack at Osberton. Photo by Adam Fanthorpe, used with permission.

The horses include two intermediates, Horseware Destiny who is a fairly new arrival from Ireland, and CTS So What, or Jack,  a new ride this year, owned by Mr and Mrs Sainsbury and sponsored by Succeed,

“It’s really cool to have him because the last intermediate I did was back in 2009. I was doing Wellington Intermediate this summer on Jack and I don’t normally get that nervous before cross country but this time I really was and couldn’t understand why. Once I’d finished I realized that it had been three years since my last intermediate. You think when you lose an intermediate horse you might get another one quite quickly but you don’t, I’ve been doing pre-novice and novice ever since, so it’s so exciting to have Jack and do something a bit bigger again. We finished this year with a double clear at  Osberton Two Star which was such fun.  Jack came to us because he’d had quite a few riders and the owners didn’t really know what to do with him so they phoned Mum up looking for suggestions of what they should do, and they thought it might be a nice idea to see if we got on. I love him to bits. You need to love him for him to give you anything back. He’s a really gentle horse actually, despite not being able to tell him what to do, and he’s big and black so he looks beautiful in all his photos! I’d love to take him to Blenheim next year but that’s a big if, if everything goes well, which we all know very rarely happens with horses.”

Two young horses complete the string for now, a five year old mare, Boleybawn Carly – “she is going to be my superstar, I absolutely love her, I’ve never ridden anything so talented although I’m probably very biased! She’s just so cool, she’s got such a character and she’s unbelievably intelligent, probably too intelligent but she moves and she jumps and I love her!  She came from Ireland and she’s half Selle Francais and half Irish Sport Horse” and Daisy, “Daisy is our little project who we are planning to sell on but if I have my way we won’t! She’s going to take a little bit longer; she’s six but done absolutely nothing. She’s got such a cool attitude, she’s quite brave and very independent in the respect that she doesn’t really need you but at the same time she quite enjoys you being there. I really like her. She’s German but looks more like a thoroughbred.”

Boleybawn Carly

Lissa does all the horses without any extra help,  “It does get a little bit lonely but it’s alright; that’s the only thing with the horses is that  you do feel a bit isolated and it does get a bit boring talking to absolutely no-one for whole days at a time but it is worth it. The horses get me out of bed in the morning, and I am a bit over-obsessed with them, I cuddle them far too much!  Eventually I’d like to work towards getting some help as I get more in, but at the same time I do quite like doing it myself purely because I like the fact that the horses get to know you so much better because everything is you. They learn to trust you that little bit more, and have that connection, more; you feel much closer and much more personal with them, and I think that helps in your partnership with them.”

Lissa trains with GB Young Rider, Junior and Pony Show-Jumping Trainer Corinne Bracken for jumping, and also occasionally  with Pat Burgess who taught her mother. Lissa has also just returned from three weeks intensive training with Bettina Hoy in Germany after she started riding with her on the flat last summer,

“She’s just amazing. I really had no idea what I was doing so I thought  it was probably a really good idea to get some clarification and understanding from her. I’ve never been shouted at so much in my life, but in a good way! Encouraging shouting, if that makes sense! I’d only ridden two horses on the first day and I was stiff jumping off the second one, it was so embarrassing – stiff already and I hadn’t even sat down! I really admire her, she’s given me a new lease of life on the dressage front. I was getting more and more frustrated with how bad I was but now I can see a way of getting through it, she’s just given me such hope.  When I finished the three weeks there she gave me a set of Kentucky white exercise boots  – I’ve never had such a nice set of boots in my life, and she told me that now every time I put them on before a dressage test I have to remember everything she’s taught me. I was like a little kid with a brand new toy, I took them back to my room and sat on my bed playing with them, I could hardly believe it! They’re so nice I don’t know if I’ll ever dare ride in them at all! Perhaps I’ll save them for Badminton –  they might have cobwebs on them but I’ll bring them out then!”

Because Lissa was only in Germany for three weeks she didn’t take her own horses but instead rode all of Bettina’s including the mighty Lanfranco TSF, “He’s huge and he’s so funny, he’s not scared by anything natural, like rabbits or anything like that but if there’s a tractor or a van then he gets really worried. He’s lovely; I didn’t ride him much but I was walking him around the arena for Bettina and she told me he was completely behind the leg and falling asleep, so now the new plan is I’ll warm him up right before Badminton and the big events to get him really relaxed and lazy!”

By far Lissa’s biggest influence by her own admission has been her mother, “Mum has got something so uniquely special and I don’t know if anyone else will ever have the same thing, she has a way of understanding and riding cross country courses, I love walking courses with her and listening to her. I’ve always walked with her and been fascinated by what she says because she doesn’t just take in a fence, she’ll take in everything around it and what the horse will see first, and what’s in the distance, and how they’ll be feeling coming into the fence and so it’s always been such a nice feeling to grow up seeing things through the horse’s eye. Even from the beginning I’ve always loved loved my cross country with Mum.

“[And in the saddle] I love cross country. I’ve often thought it would be quite good fun to go pure show-jumping but I’d miss the cross country. I wouldn’t miss the dressage but I’d definitely miss the cross-country.I don’t remember ever trying to style myself after my mother, I think it’s just completely natural. I admire the way different people ride and think they’re brilliant but I’ve never thought, ‘Gosh, that’s the only way I want to sit and look’. I think if you start worrying about that you take away your feel of what’s underneath you. I have been told a couple of times that I look like my mother but I’m not quite convinced, I think I’m still a bit of a way off that!  It’s weird but the older I get the more nervous I get watching Mum, not because she’s got any worse because of course she hasn’t, she’s brilliant but I don’t know why, I feel like I’ve got more of a protective instinct towards her as I get older.”

 

Photo by Adam Fanthorpe, used with permission

I ask Lissa what her mother thinks of her choosing to pursue Eventing as a career?

“Mum never ever pushed it; I think in a way she almost wanted me to do something else because she knows how difficult it is, and for me it would be even more so because of the pressure, much as I’d like to deny that I’m aware of any of it, it’s not true and I definitely do put added pressure on myself,  I’m a bit too much of a perfectionist. When I finally realized that I did really want to do eventing seriously I think she was really excited, and said let’s try and do it properly.  Hopefully over the next few years we can start doing something worthwhile. I think the assumption is definitely that I’d be given lots of million-dollar, push button horses and have everything handed to me on a plate, but actually I’ve ridden all sorts of horses, many of them have been far from easy which has been great for my riding, and I’ve absolutely loved them all.”

Lissa tells me about checking the scoreboards one day at an event some time ago and being delighted to discover she had finished in 8th place, only to overhear a mother telling her daughter she had beaten Lucinda’s daughter, along with some disparaging remarks about her. “It was quite an eye-opener and it stuck with me for quite a long time. It’s character-building; it’s taken me a while to rise to the challenge but now I think I’m ready.”

Along with some very useful polework and grid exercises that she brought back with her from her time with Bettina in Germany, Lissa has certain ideas on her horses’ daily routine at home,

“I gallop them all and do interval training every four days, even the babies do their three lots of three minutes – I think it’s quite nice for them to have their tendons warmed and stretched even in intro and pre-novice so that they don’t get pulled later on in life, and also they get more of an idea of what their life is about. I’m a big fan of hacking, I do a lot of hacking. I don’t actually use the school that much, I should probably use it more –  if I do school them it’s usually in a field or on a hack so that they don’t get too bored or miserable or cross with me.”

I suggest to Lissa that maybe she has inherited the best of both her parents talents and she’ll eclipse the pair of them, and again with the laugh,

“I wish! We’ll see…!  Dad is equally as good at show-jumping as cross country, and cross country is obviously Mum’s forte. Dad is just the most brilliant show-jumping teacher, I wish I’d known that better before he moved back to Australia because he was just amazing with my horses before he went back. Dad had the most unbelievable eye, he can see a stride from around the arena and know if they’re going to miss or not, he’s just phenomenal, whereas Mum has always been the first one to admit she can’t see a stride and has always ridden the canter so well and doesn’t panic when there’s not a stride there because she can’t see one anyway. In that respect I think they bounced off each other quite well when they were working together and growing in the sport together.”

Photo by Adam Fanthorpe, used with permission

 

At just 23 years old Lissa is a refreshing mix of bubbly fun and giggles, and yet also serious and ambitious, considering my questions carefully and anxious not to offend anyone, and when she describes her mother one last time I can’t help thinking she might as well be talking about herself,

“She’s very down-to-earth and level-headed about it all really, she just thinks she was always incredibly lucky. She creates her own competition, she doesn’t really compete against anyone else, if the horse goes well then she’s just over the moon and if that means last place or first place it doesn’t make a huge difference except first place is an added bonus. In a way that’s the way she’s brought me up. I haven’t had a huge amount of success so I wouldn’t still be doing it if I was motivated purely by winning  – I’m just thrilled with my horses’ good performances and if they finish well, literally they’ll get about ten minutes of kisses from everyone as they’re getting washed down!  I usually have no idea of where I’m lying in the competition but you just get so happy when your horse is happy, and that’s such a nice way to finish at a show.”

Many, many thanks to Lissa for all her time and wishing her the very best of luck next year, and thank you for reading. You can follow Lissa’s progress via her facebook page and on twitter – Go Eventing!

 

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