Aachen – The event GROW Ride, an initiative of the Olympic rider Luciana Diniz, took place from April 27th until the first of May. Equine MERC was responsible for the organisation of the event.

GROW Ride
Twenty riders participated in the 5 day course named GROW Ride. The goal is to develop riding talent. According to the methodology of Luciana Diniz, the mental side of riding is a very important aspect. This received lots of attention during the five days in the form of meditation, archery and psychological counselling. Besides that, many program items were focussed on training rider and horse by, amongst others, cavaletti training and horsemanship training.

Butterfly exercises
Luciana developed her own training method. This method uses a variable number of fences that are build up in the shape of a butterfly. This training course can be jumped in various ways. To give the participants more insight, the Butterfly training method was extensively covered during the GROW Ride in Aachen. The Butterfly exercises are also in her new book FIT4GOLD and the GROW workbook.

Finals
The finals took place on the last day, day five. The equestrian livestream company ClipMyHorse produced a video report every day. All participants lined up for the start in the Deutsche Bank Stadium. Winner Heiller Andrés Torres won free participation in the GROW Ride Finals in 2019, including hotel and flight (value €5.000,-)

Role Equine MERC
Luc van Moorsel of Equine MERC took off to Aachen to take care of the smooth running of proceedings. His responsibilities were providing structure, instructing staff and making schedules. Luc about his experiences during GROW: “It was a great week. Because we have been involved only two weeks prior to the event, it was important to find out who was responsible for what and to streamline the agreements and appointments. Working with this many nationalities was incredibly fun and educative. Our team consists of people from Brazil, Portugal, Poland, Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium. I had a great time!”

Check the video of GROW Ride by ClipMyHorse.