LOCAL duo, Zoe Addinsall and Matilda Mason have reached the pinnacle in their tetrathlon and show jumping endeavours as they were both awarded on the national stage in separate events at the Pony Club Australia (PCA) nationals.

Zoe was awarded as Australian Junior U17 female Champion at the Pony Club Australia (PCA) Nationals in the tetrathlon.

While Matilda Mason received her national recognition for show jumping at the PCA Thoroughbred Industry Careers National Championships.

Fellow local, Maddie Mayne also competed in the age group above Matilda in the show jumping with her team performing well and winning the event.

Zoe received the news she had been waiting for on Tuesday this week, when she found out via a virtual presentation that she had taken out the title.

It was over a month of nervously waiting to see if her results were enough to beat the competitors from the other states and sure enough, they were.

Local, Matilda Mason also performed very well at the tetrathlon national championships in the sub-junior age group as she finished overall second.

Matilda’s Victorian team also topped the charts and took home the Australian Champion honours rewarding their consistent performances across the four events.

She made her running ability well-known as she blew the competition out of the water to record the top 1km run in her age group with a 3.36 time.

Tetrathlon requires the individual to compete in swimming, shooting, riding and running with the points from every event added up to finalise the winner.

Both girls submitted their entries for the PCA national championships online when they competed in the events on November 13-14 in Warragul with the rest of their Victorian team.

This was the easiest way for each state to qualify considering the COVID situation didn’t enable all states to come together and hold the event at one venue.

It has been a big couple weeks for the duo who also both took out their respective age groups at the Pony Club Victoria (PCV) 2021 State Tetrathlon Championships a couple of weeks ago.

Zoe won the junior section while Matilda defended her title for the second consecutive year in the sub-junior category.

Zoe said while the online component of the tetrathlon national event was very different, it was a great honour and privilege to represent her state and win.

“It felt pretty good to take out the event, I was very proud and honoured to do that while representing my state,” she said.

“It didn’t really feel like nationals or a competition because there wasn’t a lot of people there … it (the wait for results) was very delayed.

“We were in lockdown for most of (the leadup to the event) and had a few weeks to train for it, as a team we all went down to Warragul and competed in the worst weather we could’ve had.”

Zoe said despite the poor weather, she was happy with her performances in each event and made some big improvements compared to just a month or two prior.

A few months out, her time in the 200m swim was 20 seconds off what it needed to be and with relentless training and dedication, she cut it right down.

This was evident as she took out the top swim finishing with a time of 2.34 which was almost 20 seconds quicker than her closest competitor.

She finished first in the rail jumping on horse, Hot Little Acre, third in the running and fourth in the shooting to finish with the most points overall.

“I had some good performances and felt I went pretty well in all of them … you couldn’t really know how well you had to do because you were against every other state,” Zoe said.

“Probably the riding was the hardest because it was pouring rain, but it didn’t really affect how I wanted to go.”

Zoe thanked all of the people who had assisted her in her journey so far and looked forward to competing in more events in the near future.

“It was good working with her (Matilda), and she did great to come second in the sub-juniors, she was very proud of that and had an equal first top run,” Zoe said.

Matilda said being crowned as national champion at the PCA Thoroughbred Industry Careers National Championships came as a complete shock despite her hard work in the lead up to the event.

“Winning the overall national champion was a big surprise, because each state had to compete separately,” she said.

“No times or results were released on the day, so we didn’t really know how we went, I was really just hoping our team would do well which it did, winning as well.”

The event was also in Warragul on the same day as Matilda competed for the tetrathlon, she was happy with the way she performed across both the show jumping and tetrathlon sections.

“I wasn’t really nervous once I started (the show jumping) because my horse Spider is really talented and just gets the job done,” she said.

“I was so happy with how we went, we had five rounds of jumping over the two days and Spider didn’t get a single penalty (didn’t knock any rails).

“In the tetrathlon, I was more nervous because I have to swim, run, shoot, as well as ride but I got the equal fastest run time nationally, came second overall and our team won which was incredible.

“Making the teams was my goal for the last two years since the last one in 2019 when I was too young (11) to compete.”

Matilda (sub-junior) said taking out the PCV State Tetrathlon Championships at Meeniyan was also a great experience alongside Zoe (junior).

“I won this event last year so was keen to defend my title, I took my new horse Time Maker this time and it was his first tetrathlon,” she said.

“He did an amazing job and we ended up winning for our second consecutive year as sub-junior, next year I will compete as a junior.

Next on her radar was Wannon Zone State Qualifier for show jumping in January, with Modern Pentathlon State Championships scheduled for February and plenty of other upcoming events that her and Zoe would both compete in.

For now, they will continue training in preparation for the events in the hope to replicate their strong performances in the past month.