Are you sitting comfortably?

YOU would expect someone who spends more hours in the saddle than most to put his own comfort at the top of the priority list – but you would be wrong.

“My bed is comfortable, I regard an armchair as being comfortable, but I don’t think of saddles in terms of comfort,” says Simon Lawrance, Heythrop joint-master and field master, former five-star event rider, advanced medium dressage competitor and British Eventing central region under-18 coach. “My priority has always been the comfort of my horse over my own.”

And that is something master saddler Mark Fisher has heard before.

“‘I don’t matter,’ they say. But they do matter,” stresses Mark, who is in charge of making sure Britain’s World Class riders sit in perfect harmony with the constantly changing musculature of the country’s elite equine athletes.

“You want to feel you are sitting in the saddle rather than perched on top of it”
VANESSA FAIRFAX

Now there is scientific evidence that proves that rider comfort matters, thanks to Vanessa Fairfax of Fairfax Saddles, recipient of the