Sara-Jane Lanning
Sara is an advanced dressage rider, trainer and British Dressage listed judge. Her passion is competing and she trains and inspires many people at all levels to reach their full potential. She loves helping horses and riders at all levels and thinks her speciality is proving even non dressage types can be champions!
Sara has won 23 Regional Championships from Novice to Prix St Georges, and was the National Novice Open Freestyle Champion in 2014. Having spent many years producing youngsters for sale and reschooling problem horses, qualifying them for championships only for them to be sold, she now has three horses of her own who are not for sale! TRY ME ONCE, now at Grand Prix and winner of 4 Regional Championships and MI AMIGO, winner of an amazing 8 Regional Championships are both multiple champions, with six titles between them in 2014 alone, and the new addition to the stable is FURSTANO who quickly won the 2015 Regional Elementary Championship, followed by the winter Elementary and Elementary Freestyle Regional Championships.
Sara started riding at eleven years of age after moving back to England and living in the countryside. Her younger years had been spent in the busy cities of Dusseldorf in Germany, and then Paris in France. She sat on a pony at a theme park in Paris at eight but hated it saying it was a ‘dirty smelly thing’. How times have changed!
She quickly progressed to having ponies and competed in showing and pony club teams, at dressage, show jumping and her main love, eventing. After three ponies came a succession of larger horses and the move to BHS eventing proper. She competed successfully up to Open Intermediate level.
Her youngster at the time proved to be a quick learner in dressage and was not that brave cross country. He progressed rapidly to Prix St George although he was not a conventional dressage type but a Thoroughbred. Working at the time for Linda Whetstone she was lucky to have schoolmaster lessons on Linda’s advanced horse from Dane Rawlins (of Dressage at Hickstead) who was based at Linda’s at the time. Riding half passes and changes for the first time made Sara change her mind about what she wanted to do and now tries to keep her feet firmly on the floor!
She then spent many years producing youngsters for competition. Mostly warmbloods specially selected for their temperament and movement and imported from Denmark, Germany and Holland. These were trained, competed and then sold on, to homes as far apart as Thailand, Japan, the USA, and Scandinavia.
Sara now earns her living from teaching with busy clinics all around the south. She also takes in selected horses for training and competing and would love to find another competition ride to bring on to a high level.
Sara herself trains with FEI Judge and Grand Prix rider Isobel Wessels whenever she can. In the past she has learnt from Hans Eric Pedersen, Christine Stuckelberger, Dane Rawlins, Jennie Loriston-Clarke, Peter Storr and Ellen Bontje. Sara is a List 2A British Dressage Judge and has her UKCC3 Coaching Certificate.
Sara’s hobby is photography and she can be regularly seen at events complete with camera. She has had photographs published in Horse and Hound and even Carl Hester’s autobiography ‘Making It Happen’.