Varsity Artcles: Equestrian

Equestrian:

Riding to the Victory

By Galya Dimitrova

 

Like all the sports that involve animals, equestrian is exciting and surprising. It is all about speed, adrenaline and the relationship between rider and their horse. In the same time, it keeps in tune with nature because it’s one of the sports that keep you in tune with nature because it’s played outside and makes its fans get some fresh air while watching contesters pushing the boundaries with grace and enthusiasm.

Equestrian is one of the sports in our Varsity Project. 21-year old Sports Management student Laura Zeidan is amongst the star players for the Coventry University Team. She became passionate for equestrian ever since she took her first riding lessons when she was only five years old. Her persistence and eagerness resulted in her taking part in FEI Eventing and Dengie UK Showjumping Championships, in which she came out 4^th.

Here are her answer on a couple of question we asked about the sport she likes so much and how confident she is about their performance this year:

Which gender generally prevails amongst the riders – male or female?

Female for us but professionally it is quite male dominated.

Do you teach people how to ride or do you recruit only people with experience?

We offer riding lessons for all levels so anyone can have a go.

Which of the seven Equestrian disciplines do you practice?

We mainly focus on dressage and show jumping and compete in these areas. However, we are keen to get involved with doing some cross country and trying out polo.

Which of them is the most exciting one for you and why?

I have always been a keen show jumper from a young age, but since competing for the university I have become more interested in dressage.

How is your preparation going this year? Anything different?

We have a great selection of riders this year and they are all training really hard. We have more experience of the type of competition style now and know where we need to improve.

Are you going to win???

Yes, of course! We have to.

 

Varsity Project, Source Media Placement: Day 2

By Galya Dimitrova

The work around our project becomes more and moe interesting. It does take a loti of time, but the pay off is fantastic, we come up with a lot of ideas as we go and we very much enjoy woring on something entirely ours. The organizators give us a lot of freedome to do whatever we think it would be best and we try to make the most of it.

What we did today is collect all the questions we want answered for our articles. Once we reveive the answers, we will be able to start working on the actual content. The questions I came up with for my the sports I am covering are:

Badminton

1. Do you play in singles or doubles with your teams?
2. Is badminton easier to pick up and play than tennis?
3. Do you think badminton is a game that has room for showmanship?
4. Do you think the majority of people see it more as a pastime than a serious dedicated sport?

                                                       Equestrian

1. Which gender generally prevails amongst the riders – male or female?
2. Do you teach people how to ride or do you recruit only people with experience?
3. How different is riding in equestrian than riding just for pleasure?
4. How many horses do you have?
5. What breed are they?
6. Which is the most exciting part of the competition?
7. Which of the seven Equestrian disciplines do you practice?
8. Which of them is the most exciting one for you and why?

Athletics

1. Which is the most challenging area of athletics for you?
2. Which does the audience find most exciting?
3. Does each area of it require different type of diet and practice routine?
4. Do you think the majority of people really appreciate athletics only on major sports events like The Olympics?
5. Do wheelchair athletes have future on local grounds?

Snooker

1. According to you, is snooker a game of strategy?
2. Does it matter which arm you play with?
3. Do you think a player should have a high level of intelligence to play it?
4. How often do you practice with your players?
5. In your opinion, are there combinations impossible to deal with?
6. Which famous player would you like to play against?
7. Is it possible to plan a whole game ahead, like in chess?
8. How old should one be to start learning how to play?

Pool

1. Do you think pool is seen more like a pub game rather than serious sport?
2. Do players find it more challenging when they start to play it professionally?
3. Do you think this is one of the sports that people from all ages can practice and why?
4. In our opinion, should pool be better advertised in order to gain popularity as other games similar to it like snooker?
5. What do you think the future of pool will be?

Also, we added twenty neural questions as a group to go with the specific ones.

What we did as well was write down everything we want to go on our pages. I chose my pages to include:

Page Contents:

Athletics

• A photo of whoever answered my questions plus a caption with their name under it
• A picture of people in action: running
• A picture of last year’s winner plus a caption with their name under it
• A profile box at the bottom of the page
• Article (up to me)

Badminton

• A photo of whoever answered my questions plus a caption with their name under it
• An action picture: a playing couple
• A picture of this year’s team plus a caption under it
• A profile box at the bottom of the page
• Article (up to me)

Equestrian

• A photo of whoever answered my questions plus a caption with their name under it
• An action picture (a rider on a horse)
• A profile box at the bottom of the page
• Article (up to me)

 Snooker

• A photo of whoever answered my questions plus a caption with their name under it
• An action photo of the last year’s winner if possible
• A profile box at the bottom
• Article (up to me)

Pool

• A photo of whoever answered my questions plus a caption with their name under it
• A photo of a player by the pool table
• A profile box at the bottom
• Article (up to me)

We discussed the design of the pages and what to place where in terms of the whole booklet. We already have a basic storyboard and it looks very good.

Today was the day when we did the outline of our product. The work around the scaffold is always the most important one and we keep everything happen at a really quick pace. Tomorrow will also be an important day for our placement. Cannot wait for it already!