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Choosing Your First Mounted Games Pony
People ask us all the time what the perfect games pony looks like. The honest answer is that there isn't one. We have seen scruffy little cobs beat flashy purpose-bred ponies, and we have seen beautifully bred animals that simply hated the noise and the rush of a busy arena. What matters is the pony's head and its heart, far more than its papers.
Temperament comes first
A games pony has to put up with a lot. Ropes, flags, balloons being burst, riders leaning off its side, other ponies thundering past in the next lane. The pony you want is the one that takes all of that in its stride. Bold but sensible. When you go to try one, drop a bucket near it, wave something around, ask a friend to gallop past. A pony that has a little look and then carries on is gold. A pony that loses the plot will make your season miserable.
Height and build
Most games ponies stand under 15 hands, and a good number are a fair bit smaller. There is a reason for that. Half the races involve reaching down to the floor or stepping on and off, and the closer you are to the ground the easier that is. A 12.2 or 13.2 that a child can vault onto without a fight is often worth more than a bigger pony with a longer stride. If you have not done much vaulting yet, our notes on mounting and vaulting skills explain why height makes such a difference.
Speed, but the right kind
Yes, you want a pony with a turn of foot. But raw speed is the most overrated quality in this sport. The races are won and lost in the turns, the pick-ups and the handovers, not on the straight. A pony that comes back to you, turns tight off the hindleg and stands still while you grab a flag will beat a faster pony that runs through the bridle every time. Ride a few before you decide and notice which one you can actually steer at pace.
The honest trade-offs
A push-button schoolmaster is the dream for a first pony. It will teach the rider the job and build confidence fast. The catch is that good ones are rarely cheap and people hold on to them. A younger or greener pony costs less but you will be learning together, which can be hard going at the start.
If you are new to all of this, an older, been-there-done-that pony is almost always the better buy, even if it is slower. You can teach a steady pony to go faster. Teaching a fast pony to behave is a much longer road.
Try before you buy
Ride the pony more than once if you can, and ideally take an experienced games rider or one of our coaches along. Set up a couple of bending poles and a bucket and actually play. A pony can look lovely hacking down the lane and still hate the job. Watching it tackle a simple race tells you far more than any amount of standing still in the yard.
Once you have found your pony, the fun starts. Have a read of our guide to training your pony for bending races, because that one race teaches a pony almost everything it needs for the rest.