Horses for courses

A globe-trotting grandma uses her love for horses to help those struggling to be accepted in the mainstream world. Words: Bette flagler; Photos: Nicola Edmonds

ROSLEIN WILKES CREDITS horses with saving her life. Five months after losing her husband Rod to melanoma in 1994, her daughter Rosemary encouraged her to answer a call for volunteers put out by the Blenheim branch of the New Zealand Riding for the Disabled Association (RDA). Roslein didn’t know anything about RDA but went along because she liked horses. And it gave her a new focus, she says. It got her out of the house.

If the horses really did help her survive the death of her spouse, then she came to that lifeline honestly. When Roslein was 13 her mother, aged 35, died of liver cancer, leaving a 40-year-old widower with six children. Roslein was the eldest, the youngest was just two and the family lived on Galteemore, an Arabian stud farm in Marlborough’s Awatere Valley. The kids spent after-school hours on horseback, riding the paddocks with their father. It was the horses that held that young family together.

Now, what started as a childhood way of life and came back to rescue a grieving woman has taken this mother of six and grandmother of 14 around the world. It has given her a vocation that led to her winning a Rotary Paul Harris Medal and being made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit. And it has paved the way for her to become one of the world’s most highly regarded experts on equestrian sports for the intellectually disabled.

 
People with physical and/or intellectual disabilities can participate in RDA programmes and there are approximately 65 riders each week at the one Roslein runs in Blenheim; the youngest is four and the oldest are in their 50s. All riders, she says, have specific goals. Some ride to gain social skills and develop self-esteem, others to develop muscle tone and improve balance and posture. For others, such as intellectually disabled 40-year-old Nicola Harvey, riding is a cornerstone of life. “Nicky has ridden twice a week for years,” says Roslein. “Her mother died a few years ago and last year her father died; she really doesn’t have anyone except us.”

There are some riders who are quite talented and competitive but will never have the financial or practical ability to care for horses of their own or be able to compete at pony club or other horse shows. “And then there are the children,” says Roslein. “Sometimes when they start all they can do is lie on the horse’s back with one person leading and two others walking alongside. After a while, they may be able to hold up their heads. And then, eventually, they begin to sit. It’s just amazing what being around horses can do for the development of a child.”

Since Roslein first walked through the barn door of the Blenheim RDA in 1995, she has learned a lot about physical and intellectual disabilities by studying and working alongside occupational therapists, physiotherapists and school specialists. She is now on the National Training Advisory Board for the RDA and, along with other senior coaches, physiotherapists and occupational therapists, has responsibility for designing the programmes for the organization’s 54 clubs, its coaches and volunteers.

In New Zealand, RDA provides the majority of riding activities for Special Olympics which, as an organization, is open to anyone with an intellectual disability. When NZ Life & Leisure caught up with Roslein, she was not long back from Morocco where she and four others from Ireland, the United States, Egypt and Poland had been guests of Princess Lalla Amina. The princess is the President of Special Olympics Morocco and a board member of Special Olympics International. They came together to write a new coaching guide and rule book for the equestrian division of Special Olympics International. Roslein has been the Special Olympics New Zealand equestrian coach for two World Games. In 2003 she took the New Zealand equestrian team to Ireland and in 2007 to China. In 2011 she and a delegate from Poland will be responsible for the entire equestrian competition when the World Games are held in Greece.

New Zealand has a policy that ensures every athlete has an equal opportunity to be selected to attend but once they’ve been to a World Games there is a stand-down period of six years before they can be selected again. “We go away for a month and we want to give this experience to as many athletes as possible,” Roslein says. “I think that’s a lovely thing to do. This isn’t about elitist sport. We’re not taking the best every time; we’re giving everyone a chance to go.” That’s not to say the level of competition is dismal. In fact, at the 2007 Special Olympics World Summer Games in Shanghai, there were, overall, 109 performances that would have bettered those at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

When the first Special Olympic Games were held in Chicago in 1968, most of the American and world press ignored the event; Roslein is troubled that the New Zealand press continues in that vein. “We came back from China with 50-plus athletes who had all won medals but there was very little mention of how well all of them had done. They train so hard and do so well against all odds,” she says. “One young powerlifter won four gold medals in China. He is top in the world. He is autistic and requires a lot of extra care – but he could, potentially, compete at Olympic level.”

Still, she and 2500 other coaches and volunteers labour on so that New Zealand’s 5000 Special Olympics athletes can benefit from the transformative power of sport. Employed by RDA to work 16 hours a week, Roslein works at least full time and has no plans to retire. “I don’t know what I would do all day,” she says. “Knit?”

Special Olympics New Zealand

• From 2 to 6 December, more than 1000 athletes will gather in Palmerston North for the 2009 New Zealand National Summer Games. Athletes will compete in 10 sports: aquatics, athletics, basketball, bocce, tenpin bowling, equestrian, football, golf, indoor bowls and powerlifting.

• While the words “National Games” often imply an elite event, that’s not the case for Special Olympics. In mainstream sport, only the fastest or highest-scoring compete at national level but in Special Olympics athletes qualify for the National Games by participating in a required number of training hours as well as by attending local and regional competitions.

• “Athletes are ‘divisioned’ so that they compete against other athletes of similar levels of ability but they are recognized for what they can do, not what they can’t do,” says Sue Kysow, Special Olympics New Zealand events manager, “and that’s how Special Olympics is different. If someone takes 40 seconds to run 100 metres, that’s fantastic.”

• A year-round programme of sports training and athletic competition for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, Special Olympics was founded in 1968 in Chicago by Eunice Kennedy Shriver and, globally, has more than 3.1 million athletes and 227 Special Olympics Programs in 175 countries. In New Zealand, more than 5000 athletes train and compete in 16 sports throughout the country.

• Special Olympics athletes develop improved physical fitness and motor skills as well as greater self-confidence. These skills help their ability to live normal, productive lives. But on a deeper basis the organization has been responsible for helping to eliminate stigma and break down stereotypes.