TWO local riders will be aiming to hit the heights when they take part in a major tournament this weekend.

Teenagers Phoenix Lewis and April Joynson will be competing in the British Young Riders Dressage (BYRDS) Inter-Regional competition where they will be representing the South West of England region And, if their progress continues, they could be chosen for national honours.

The two Wotton-under-Edge riders have been saddled up for Gloucestershire recently and good results lead to their involvement with the South West at Richmond Equestrian Centre, North Yorkshire, this weekend.

Joynson, 16, will be taking part in the B squad test there and said: “I am in the individual and the team tests.”

She will be riding Rocky Robin during the weekend, and added: “I love being able to produce a horse so Robin was bought as a four-year-old and had done no dressage at all.

“I love the perfection of the sport. With show-jumping, people say it is about jumping a jump where as with dressage, you have to get it spot on. To get those scores at a dressage test rather than saying you have jumped clear in a round, you can get feedback on what you can improve on and what was good. That is what I like.”

It helps Joynson and Lewis that her Karen Joynson is the coach to the two girls. April said: “As my mum is the coach, I have been brought up around horses but it has been only the last three years that I have got into dressage. Before that, I was kind of doing everything.”

Lewis, 15, has been riding ‘from quite a young age’ but has linked with her horse, Polly, for the last year.

She said: “The nice thing about dressage is that, unlike show-jumping where you knock over a pole and you are out, here you can make a mistake but you can make it up further along in your section.

“It is nice because, when you are getting into it, it is better than knocking over a pole and that is it. As you are getting into a sport, you start at low levels and can have a horse who can have a bit of a meltdown in one phase and it won’t really affect them so you can build it up.”

Dressage is so precise that it is not just the riders that need to look emasculate during competition but also the horses – and that is where ‘super groom’ Polly Webb comes into the equation at the Wotton yard.

Webb said: “The horses have to look spotless so we have to bath them and plat them and make sure there are no specs of dust on them. Then it is just general support.”

The two girls can now concentrate on their equestrian aims after completing their GCSEs last week.

And in a region where equestrianism is a big sport, it is quite an achievement for the two teenagers to represent the South West at a big competition.

Coach Karen added: “To be selected out of such a massive amount of riders means they have done well. The lovely thing is that they have both been selected for not only this inter-regional but they were selected for the county – and they are now waiting to hear if they have been selected for the England team.

“What I love about the girls is they work so hard and they have got the results because of working so hard and it is great to be rewarded for them.”

And, with dressage stars like Gloucestershire’s own Charlotte Dujardin, who is off to the Olympics in August to defend her gold medal won in London four years ago, to inspire the Wotton teenagers, anything is possible in the future.