My BE Life: Miranda Collett

The scorer and entries secretary – and brains behind eventingscores.co.uk – shares her favourite eventing memories and the one thing she couldn’t live without

My first eventing experience

Walking the cross country course at Molland Horse Trials on Exmoor in the 1970s thinking that the fences were enormous. Then a couple of coach trips to Badminton with Pony Club – there were seriously massive fences and equally massive queues for the ladies’ loos!

To me, eventing means…

Satisfying teamwork and a really lovely group of people enjoying the sport and the countryside.

I couldn’t live without…

Lapsang souchong.

My toughest moment

When working for VSO in Sierra Leone, two of our volunteers were kidnapped and held hostage for six months. It took five days to confirm that they were alive, with our informant being a nine-year-old child. My working life changed from job assessments and volunteer inductions to daily security briefings and eventually a mass evacuation at short notice.

My favourite eventing memory

A very early sunny morning at Treborough with that amazing view across the Bristol Channel to Wales, with just the breeze and the birdsong (until the lorries arrived). We are so privileged to have access to such beautiful spots in the countryside to run our sport.

My future plans

The success of Eventing Scores has taken me by surprise. I started it to provide live scoring at events locally with no great plans for it to be used as widely as it is now. It can be improved further, perhaps better integration with dressage scoring apps and fence judging apps and more online entry systems. I would like to email dressage test sheets to riders, rather than everyone having to wait for them. The event stats could be developed further as well, so there’s plenty for me to work on once the season comes to an end.

Article first published in the Autumn 2021 issue of British Eventing Life magazine