Kayla takes out equestrian title

St Andrew’s Anglican College student Kayla Kolb with her horse Leo.

Contributed

Kayla Kolb made her way to the top of the podium earlier this month when she took out her division at the Queensland Equestrian Interschool Eventing Championships.

Eventing involves riders competing in dressage, cross country and show jumping.

A clean ride in the showjumping round of the championships propelled Kayla from second to first in a close finish to the pre-novice division.

The St Andrew’s Anglican College student was happy with her performance at the championships and surprised to win.

“It was really great to see all the hard work paying off,” she said.

“And it was great because my school is really supportive of my riding and it was good to win the interschool one for them as well.”

The 16-year-old is also on the Queensland eventing junior squad and aims to get her horse, Leo, and her riding skill up a level by the end of the year.

“I’ve been doing pre-novice for about a year now and I’m looking to move up to one star by the end of this year, hopefully,” Kayla said.

“I’ve been very fortunate to have him (Leo). He has been absolutely great.”

Along with regular eventing competitions, Kayla will also be competing in the national interschool eventing championships in September.

“We’ve got nationals this year, at the end of school term, in Sydney, so hopefully that will be a good event as well,” Kayla said.

“I would like to have a really good result.”

Kayla said she aspired to continue improving at eventing and hoped to one day make a national representative squad.

“I’d like to keep progressing up the grades in eventing and I would also, hopefully, maybe make the (Queensland) squad again next year and maybe make one of the junior squads that compete for the Trans Tasman teams,” she said.