Snyder is on the ride of her life
Life for 18-year-old Raelyn Snyder is all about balance — literally.
While most people her age are balancing big life decisions that come with post-high school aspirations, Snyder is doing that while performing big stunts on the back of a horse.
Teaming up with Allegra Hart of Mebane, North Carolina, along with coach and lunger Nick Hansen of Mountain Laurel Equestrian Center, Snyder became part of the first team from the East Coast to qualify for the Federation Equestre Internationale's (FEI) pas-de-deux world championships earlier this month.
It's no small feat, but to be one of 10 teams in the world selected for a shot at the championship while training for nine months is a true testament to the amount of work they and Snyder's horse, Lightning, put in.
"They are spending the two days a week I am lunging Lightning behind the scenes warming up and not wasting the horse's time. It is 100% gymnastics on a horse," Hansen said. "They do a ton of work in the gym to make themselves stronger. They're working on a barrel — a large drum with large handles that is stationary as if it's a horse to work on muscle memory. We're using the horse to essentially show a final picture."
It's a picture the pair had to paint rather quickly, given the distance between them and the timeline they were working with.
"With us being eight hours apart, the first couple of months, she'd come up here and train four days a week for 3 to 4 hours a day," Snyder said of Hart. "When I was in Florida, she'd come down twice a month for a week each time. She then moved in and we worked a lot on the barrel, and got familiar with each other there and by training on Lightning two to three times a week."
Snyder and Hart — who chose to partner up in pas-de-deux after becoming familiar with one another across many vaulting competitions over the years — had their first competition in April in North Carolina. Later that month, the two, who became "like sisters," competed in Hungary, using an Italian horse named Dorian. Both times, they captured first. According to FEI, Snyder is ranked 15th internationally and has competed in a dozen registered competitions. She placed in the top 10 in all of them, winning five times, including four of the last six events.
Despite finishing runner-up at the world championships, Snyder isn't one to hang her head.
"We're very happy with how we finished. We were ninth, but all the other vaulters had been training for years. The top three were together for over 10 years," Snyder said. "Their routines were so beautiful to watch and you could tell they had been working on them for years. We showcased the best that we could do with Lightning. We had a bit of a fall in the first round but had the best display we've ever had in the second round.
"We were so excited to be competing at the championships against the world's best. It was an honor to be there. ... We made the artistry of the routine look a lot more fluid there. It was a lot prettier to watch after that than it was in the beginning."
One could say they caught Lightning in a bottle with how quickly Snyder and Hart went from pairing up in September to competing for a world championship 10 months later. Snyder gives a lot of that credit to Hansen. He too came away with a lot of good from their showing in Switzerland a couple of weeks ago.
"Anytime you're able to go to Europe, it's a privilege to see how it's done. The French, German and Austrians are always impressive. They live and breathe it. The road up to this has been fun and it's always been exciting," Hansen said. "It always comes down to the wire. We weren't sure about Lightning going until 3 days before the competition.
"Everybody was buying for spots and wondering how they could get their scores higher, and buy higher scores. It's based on how good you're going to be based on representing your country and being a positive sport. Did we do well enough to be qualified to represent the U.S.?"
The federation sure thought so, giving them a chance to make a new mark for a growing sport along the eastern border of the United States.
Galloping toward dreams
Snyder, who lends a hand on Hansen's farm by tending to the horses and orders grains and hay in return for keeping her horse on his premises, plans to leave the area for Florida full-time in September.
She also works on another farm and for Burger King, but the 2023 Southern Columbia grad, who's been going back and forth between here and Florida, wants to start her own business. She hopes to grow vaulting in an area that allows horses to be outside year-round, and where there currently is no vaulting team.
"I've always been in love with the sport of vaulting and the artistry of it. I've been doing it since I was 4. I've always wanted to have my own team," Snyder said. "With me wanting to move to Florida, there is a lot more opportunity and people to work with down there.
"There are 60,000 horses that come in just for the winter. There's a very high demand right now and it's fallen into place. There are Olympians and professional riders who would like their children to start riding. I'd create a competitive vaulting team, but I'd also have separate classes for people learning balance and connecting with the horse."
Hansen will continue to lend Snyder a hand any way he can, continuing to lunge Lightning as Snyder focuses on a solo career moving forward. For someone who has to stay silent during competitions, even going as far as putting blinders on so he doesn't feel the need to give immediate feedback, Snyder says Hansen and Lightning "make a great team."
"Lightning and him have such a great understanding of each other and I can't replace him with anybody else," she said.
Just like the girl who showed up to ride horses and was guided to vaulting instead because it was safer. That experience is irreplaceable.
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