From the war in Ukraine to the prestigious CHIO Aachen Equestrian Championships. Polina Shovkova, a Ukrainian equestrian.

The international equestrian championship CHIO Aachen annually brings together, without exaggeration, representatives of the world’s equestrian sport elite. The best riders and horses, including those from as far away as the United States and Australia, travel great distances (and are subjected to a lot of stress, I must say) just to take part in this outstanding competition. In the summer of 2024, the attendance record was broken in Aachen. More than 370 thousand spectators attended the championship. Most of the athletes who participated this year were later seen at the Olympics in Paris: Ingrid Klimke, Isabell Werth, Charlotte Fry. Polina Shovkova, a young and talented rider, was the only representative of Ukraine at CHIO Aachen this year.

The last chords of Caleb Arredondo’s saxophone solo were heard. To a thunderous applause, the slender and perfectly composed rider in a yellow and blue dress costume jumped off her dark bay, almost chocolate stallion, and, having completed the performance strictly according to the regulations, smilingly headed for the exit of the arena, where journalists and photographers were already crowding.

The excitement and tension that had been chasing her right up to the very entrance to the arena disappeared during the performance from the very moment Polina jumped on the horse. It was an unforgettable feeling: unity with the horse and the audience. And now she was flying as if on wings. The girl was delighted with her performance. The coach was also very pleased with the results. He hugged the athlete by the shoulder and congratulated her on the successful completion of the program. And only then did she feel about to cry, either out of happiness or because the tension of all these days had finally released her.

After all, before the freestyle program, the girl’s shoulder was very painful, but she overcame herself and despite the pain, still performed with full dedication, although the forearm stand and especially the jump into the shoulder stand took an extraordinary effort of will. However, she managed to do it so elegantly that no one — neither the audience nor the judges— noticed her strain. And even the most difficult part of the competition, the technical test, was over. Polina had only been practicing all its elements for three months, but thanks to her coach’s support and hard training, she succeeded. And even what the rider considered the most difficult — dismount, a technically challenging jump off the horse, she performed perfectly. Although she often got injured in this exercise during training. Her heel or knee would hurt. And it was difficult to come back to normal, because when you load your legs, it’s hard to ensure that you have peace of mind.

Everyone around her — coaches, other athletes, assistants and journalists — were amazed that a girl who was only sixteen years old could perform at this level. In fact, this was the first time that juniors had participated in this competition, as previously these competitions were held exclusively for adult athletes.

Polina was incredibly happy when she saw her scores, as she made it to the top ten in vaulting.

Happiness and elation were something that others could see. But when she went to her horse and hugged him, she couldn’t hold back her tears.

It was as if the bitter feelings she had barely contained on that cold March day in 2022, when she stood at the checkpoint waiting for her documents to be checked alongside other people who had crammed into the car to evacuate the attacked city, had returned. She wondered if she would ever hug her horse again in this life. Or even hug her own father, who remained in Ukraine, again. Or even if she would live at all…

“War… War… War,” her heart was beating.

It was with tears in her eyes that Polina left her two favorites, Dépêche and Tyra, in Ukraine. Dépêche was the first horse on which she started to train, and of course, she will always be special to her. These horses from a small sports school studied the basics of vaulting together with the athletes. Together they overcame all difficulties. This club was a forty-minute drive from Poltava. The young athletes always traveled by bus, and it was especially difficult to get there in winter because there was a hill at the entrance to the equestrian school that the bus could not overcome in winter, and the girls had to walk on snow and ice. There were only four horses in the stable for dressage. The trainer with whom the girls started taught them a lot, but then the father of Polina’s friend, who owned the stable, became their trainer and lunger (a person who stands in the center of the circle and holds the horse on the cord to make it run around the circle). There were six of them who were engaged in vaulting. The young athletes trained on horses and in a gym with an iron horse and various accessories, which, of course, were not enough for professional training. The children came on weekends and practiced all the time.

“I didn’t want to ride horses at all,” Polina later recalled in an interview. ”It was something so unknown to me, and I was a little afraid of horses. But my friend had been riding since she was a little girl because her dad was a trainer and owner of a stable in Poltava. She suggested I try it because they were organizing a summer camp. I was reluctant at first, but I decided to give it a try. I got on a horse for the first time, and I immediately started to do well and it was very easy. But it wasn’t vaulting, it was just riding. It was there that I mastered all the basic skills. It was almost six years ago, when I was eleven. From that moment on, it all started.”  

Polina recalls how she got acquainted with vaulting. The young athletes were invited to attend a seminar in Kyiv, where a new equestrian sport was to be presented. Surprisingly, they didn’t even know what vaulting was before. The young riders went to Kyiv very spontaneously: they were offered the opportunity and they took a train the same day. And it was then that Polina met the coach who shared her triumph in Aachen. Anthony Bro Petit came from France to conduct this seminar, where he tested the general athletic training of theriders. Polina and her friend Katya were the only riders with experience in gymnastics, so everything came very easily to them. The coach noted that the girls had the correct mechanics of performing tricks, and they would succeed if they continued to do it. The riders liked the new kind of equestrian sport, but the equestrian school where they were training had nothing: neither surcingle (special ammunition for volleying) nor other equipment. But the athletes didn’t lose courage and began to fasten a belt on the horse, trying to do something. At first, it all looked like a hobby, and then they came to Kyiv for seminars two or three more times. After that, the equestrian school finally got its own surcingle, and it was a very memorable day for everyone, because at that time it was the first surcingle in Ukraine. After that, Polina and her friend started practicing more seriously, but there were very few trainings.

“In general, we had been doing gymnastics for a long time,” Polina says of her friends, ”from the age of 4 to 8. Then it happened that all six of us went to a circus studio. There is such a variety of sports combined there, which gives you the perfect preparation for vaulting. Later, when we moved on to equestrian sports, we, of course, also did strength exercises with our vaulting coach, but I think we got our main training in the circus studio.”

The young athletes evacuated from Ukraine to Slovakia two weeks after the full-scale invasion began.

In this hospitable country, the Equestrian Federation helped the riders a lot, and the girls were able to train. They stayed there for four months, and it was during this time that they made great progress in their training. The athletes trained on horses and on a movie, an iron “horse” that completely replicates the shape and movement of a real horse. They even lived near the stables, which was very convenient for training. Polina believes that it was during this period that they began to take up vaulting seriously. In Slovakia, vaulting is more widespread than in Ukraine, so it’s easier to train and develop in this area of equestrian sport. There are trained horses, good training equipment, and a coach who could teach the Ukrainian athletes a lot. The riders studied the safety and balance of the elements of individual exercises, trained body control, and honed their correct position. They practiced transitions between exercises, worked on their height, width and amplitude. The coach also paid a lot of attention to the correspondence of the exercises to the biomechanics of the horse’s movement. The first experience of the competition in vaulting also took place in Slovakia — and only at the last, fourth competition in that country, did the girls realize how terribly they had performed in that first competition. Now the progress was already noticeable.

Later, Polina moved to Munich, where she had the opportunity to prepare for serious competitions with her favorite coach. Every day she goes to the gym here to do strength exercises, and she also trains on the movie for two hours a day, and twice a week she trains on a real horse. The German horse from the same stable in Munich where she trains was also offered to the athlete by her coach Anthony Bro Petit. This horse has very high athletic performance, 8 points out of 10. For the first time, this star tandem — Polina and Belasco — performed in Italy, and after that, they have been together at every competition.

“Each horse has its own character,” says Polina about her sporting partner, ”and it may be that there is no contact. My first competition on Belasco was in March, and it took me about three months to feel comfortable on him. I was very nervous during the first competition because I didn’t know how he would behave. In Aachen, I already trusted him 100 percent. But I think it takes 4-5 months to feel comfortable on a horse.”

The performance at CHIO Aachen was the first major competition for the young athlete. She had been preparing for it for about three months, and it was also a surprise from her coach. Polina had been competing in regular competitions, and her coaches saw her progress and suggested that she try her force at more serious challenges. In three months, she had to prepare a completely new program. Of course, it was very difficult, and everyone thought that the girl would perform average, which would be good for the first major competition. Probably, this was her motivation to prove that she could perform at the level of those people who have been practicing for ten years or more. With such a positive attitude, the rider was able to prepare very well. In order to show her best side and represent Ukraine, under whose flag she was, of course, competing, she practiced in the gym for four hours every day and trained twice a week on Belasco. Undoubtedly, she wanted to train more with the horse, but the athlete realized that the horse needed rest. On the eve of the trip to Aachen, she felt that she had done everything in her power.

Polina traveled to Aachen with her coach. It was a wonderful trip, they sang songs in the car, joked and discussed the upcoming competitions. That was her first time in Aachen. The city made great impression on her. Standing in front of a dazzling white stable decorated with wrought iron ornaments and covered with a shiny tiled roof, she marveled at how beautiful a stable could be.

It had been raining for a week before the athletes arrived, but the weather was perfect during the competition, as if nature itself was welcoming the rider from Ukraine.

“I was in a good mood,” Polina recalls. ”I started my day with dancing and stretching, so I relaxed and prepared my body for the competition. I also spent a lot of time with Belasco. I brushed him, fed him, brought him water, and tried to be as close to him as possible to prepare him and myself mentally for the competition. I tried to make sure that Belasco and I were one.”

And Polina really succeeded. Thousands of grateful spectators witnessed the triumph of a young rider from Ukraine, almost a child, who had just recovered from the psychological trauma and, preparing for the competition in a hospitable but foreign country, performed on a par with adults, much more trained and experienced riders. Coaches, judges, and equestrian experts alike are convinced that this is only the beginning of the debutante’s ascent to Olympus.

Throughout the next winter, the young star and her faithful horse Belasco will be preparing for the competition that will take place in Italy in the spring, around Easter, and then, hopefully, CHIO again.

“I really want to, but this is my last year at school. And I have to pass my exams. I don’t know how I’m going to do it all. I really hope that I will be able to combine everything and will definitely go to Aachen.”

Photo @spacecat.photoart