About Antonia

Antonia is a former three day event rider, and has taken many horses from scratch to advanced level. She still competes in all disciplines and derives the greatest pleasure in producing well trained and confident horses for others to take on up through the grades.  She has been running an event yard since 1982, although nowadays is so busy with the saddle fitting that she only has time to do one horse, and has rented the rest of the yard out.  She is a BE Accredited Trainer, and any spare time is taken up with teaching today's eventing hopefuls.

In fact, unlike many saddle fitters who started out in the saddle manufacturing or retail sectors, Antonia came into saddle fitting from the teaching and training perspective, which gives her a clear insight into the needs of the modern competition rider and horse.  As she puts it “I got really fed up with trying to teach riders to sit in a correct, balanced position on saddles that were out of balance, and was forever putting make-shift pads under the front or back of pupils’ saddles to give the riders some idea of what I was trying to achieve! And of course its not just the rider at stake – if the rider is out of balance, his or her weight is not in the right place for the horse to carry it, which leads to poor performance at best and a sore back at worst.”

Antonia's passion for correct saddle fitting grew and she set about acquiring as much knowledge as possible.  The SMS's training and qualification procedures are very thorough and necessitate a full knowledge of saddle construction, horse and rider anatomy and the bio-mechanics of how the horse works, and how important it is to relate each of these factors.