Passionate and committed, Queensland based dressage coach and rider Nicole Tough never stops learning and studying her sport despite the wisdom she’s already garnered over the years. And her biggest teachers? The horses themselves.
Growing up in a non-horsey family in the suburbs of Sydney, Nicole had to wait until her family moved to Queensland and her dad bought a share in a racehorse before horses came into her life. She recalls: “My dad and Noel Payne, the racehorse’s other owner-trainer, conspired and bought me a Galloway of mixed breed called Cha Chi, and my journey began when I was 13 years old. I did Pony Club and Interschool equestrian competitions had just started, so we participated in those.” Her first instructor was actually a jockey, Terry Payne, who helped her with all the basics.
However, dressage wasn’t Nicole’s first love. She was an adrenaline junkie who loved eventing but had to do dressage “to get to the fun stuff.” It wasn’t until the purchase of an Anglo Arabian for Nicole’s dad that things changed. It bucked her off when they went to try him, and 14-yearold Nicole’s response? “Oh, I love him. We should totally buy him.”
The horse was purchased … and was never ridden by Nicole’s dad! It was this horse that taught the young rider that dressage was fun. “I watched the top event horses, and I remember walking the novice cross country courses hoping I wouldn’t win because I didn’t want to move up the levels to those advanced jumps. When I started to think that way, I started to look at the top dressage horses instead thinking well, I’d love my horses to look like that.”
Life started to get very busy for Nicole in 1990. Over the next three years, she finished her Bachelor of Arts, received her teaching diploma, married husband Colin, had their son, and purchased her first “serious” horse Landerlee, an unbroken Holsteiner filly. “While I was studying, I taught aerobic classes and gave dressage lessons and by the time I’d finished, I thought maybe I could make a living coaching dressage,” she explains. “It was more flexible in the hours I could work. So I trained to do my EA Level 1 General and later Level 2 Dressage Specialist accreditations.”
Since those humble beginnings, Nicole has gone on to train 12 horses to FEI level. All of them have reached the Queensland State Squad, a few made it to the National Squad and there were multiple State and National titles, as well as Horse of the Year awards along the way. Nearly all of the horses were bought unbroken and Nicole had to learn the hard way; training them up, moving them on and then starting again with something that had a little more natural ability. However, she only tried to break in one, after which she decided you really need a round yard and perhaps not a dressage saddle for such adventures!
Life throws ups and downs at you, and Nicole experienced the devastation of a career ending accident to her top horse Glencoe Manhatten during a Squad training session in 2007. Seeing how quickly one bad moment can destroy years and years of training, Linda and Beau Dowsett, her clients at the time, decided to take Nicole horse shopping in Germany, and what began with a tragedy turned into a sliding doors moment. “That started a whole different ball game for me,” she remembers. “I sold all my horses to commit myself to Beau and Linda and had some wonderful, wonderful years with them and their daughter Danielle.”
Nicole still remembers that first flight over to Germany: “We hit a random air pocket while flying over Afghanistan and the plane just dropped, and I thought, that’d be right, I get this amazing opportunity to help buy horses in Germany and I get shot out of the sky before I get there!” Happily, Nicole landed safely in Europe and after some training with Leonie Brammal, rode a multitude of horses in two weeks. Expat Robert Schmerglatt guided the Aussies through their buying experience and three horses were brought back to Nicole’s for training: four-year-old Flavio; Dante, a five-year-old; and two-year-old Furst Tyme. “I didn’t pick the fanciest horses,” says Nicole, “I picked the horses I thought I could work with and make a difference with.” All the horses made it to Grand Prix.