Kildare para dressage star Katie Reilly has an LA 2028 Paralympics dream and £70,000 sponsorship goal to make her dreams come true
Katie Reilly
- Irish para dressage Katie Reilly has recently returned from a success European Championships in the sport - and is now dreaming bigger
- Katie, from Kildare in Ireland but now based in the UK, has her sights set on the Los Angeles Paralympics in 2028 - but needs help to get there
- Reilly, who has cerebral palsy, is hoping to raise £70,000 to help fulfill her American dream
- Read below for an interview with Katie, where she outlines her ambitions over the next three years heading towards LA - and how you can help.
It costs a fair whack of money to go to these international events and to compete, so at the minute we're quite lucky. We are sponsored by a lovely company for bedding with Wood & Slumber Equine Shavings, who have been amazing to us. We have Red Mills feed for the horse feed and they give us an amount every year and they basically feed both horses for free a year. We have a supplement company Foran Equine, they obviously give us a very good deal with supplements and we also have Patrick Saddlery, who supply us with specifically adapted saddles.
But mostly what we're probably looking for now is pushing on to getting that corporate funding. Realistically, we would have a financial backer that would help us be able to pay to go to these events. It's going to probably cost us - from now - about £70,000 to get to LA.
Gaining scores in Europe is a huge insight to where I am in my training as I will be competing against some of the best riders in my grade in the world.
We'd give back to them for receiving that. I think it'll be mostly exposure but it's to back not only a young athlete but a young disabled athlete, there are high costs involved and it would look very favorable on any company I think going forward so the benefit would be very mutual.
Whatever they wanted us to do or try, we would be more than happy to work. We're willing to accommodate. We would be willing to listen to anybody and really we would move heaven and earth to make a sponsor happy.
Our yard [Allostock Yard] is very special. And I'm not just saying it - it's a beautiful, beautiful yard and what we're doing here is really nice. So, yeah, we could host anything here that they [sponsors] want.
On the first day it was pretty incredible. I'd never ridden a test like that in my life. It went really well and to be 0.3 off a bronze was just incredible with how tight the competition was.
On the second day, we didn't score as well as we thought we would; it went a little bit downwards and we were eighth place then. I thought “right, we've got to get this back for the freestyle” element and going first on the freestyle day sort of set us up as there was nothing to sort of judge us against.
So they kind of just went right, we have to just stick with those scores. And I think overall we've learned a lot from it and it was on the most part a positive experience.
I think over the winter we're really going to sort of strip it back and stay more in training and then we'll be coming back out in the New Year to do internationals again. But over the winter, it's really a lot of training, getting the bits that we've learned from the Europeans to really hone in on them and taking the judge's comments on board as well.
What I really would like to do is qualify both of them [horses] because it just is a bit of a safety net going into Europeans. At the end of the day, they are animals and anything could happen in a field. So, you really want to be able to prepare yourself so that you have a backup plan.
