Lynda Field has galloped away as The Tack Room/Never Late Freight 2023 Super Series champion on 10-year-old Australian Stock Horse Calypso.

The pair won a woollen rug, a bridle with a brass plaque, reigns, a flower garland and a sash along with the honours.

The horsemanship challenges Super Series consists of five challenges around South Australia and Victoria, the first of which took place in January at Heywood followed by challenges at Tyrendarra, Dimboola, Glencoe and Harrow.

Field won at Tyrendarra, Dimboola and Harrow while placing second at Heywood.

Field said while she did not ride at Glencoe she still managed to put some points on the board by volunteering.

“In our super series rules, if you judged or volunteered or ran an event we still collected points towards the series so we did not miss out,” she said.

“A bit of an incentive there to still put something back in the sport that we take from so we actually ended up taking the second and third place getters out of our section from that event and we get an average.”

Field said she was not initially going to ride Calypso in the challenges.

“The reason why I was riding him is that late last year, the horse that I was going to do the series on had a paddock accident and he hurt himself,” she said.

“It was pretty hard at the start because (Calypso) is a bit of a tricky horse, he is not easy, so I had to completely change the way I rode and the way I thought about things.

“He is a little tricky, he can get himself a bit wound up and a bit hot and a bit silly and you have got to learn how to ride through that and channel his energy into productive work.

“As the series went on I sort of got better and better with the horse as a partnership.

“I was very lucky to get on a horse like that and still do the horse its justice as a rider and as each challenge got on we got better and the more work I put into the horse the better we got.”

Field said it was rewarding to win the Super Series given the hard work that she put in.

“It is hard work because you have to obviously keep the horse in work the entire time and you are just consistently training,” she said.

“The competition varies from each event because your obstacles and all those sorts of things are different each time.

“To be consistent and to be sort of on top at most of them it is pretty good.

“We have a section called ‘whip crack’ where we actually have to crack targets and that has always been my weak point.

“I had to train specifically very hard at that section to score good points on the board because often I would lose lots of challenges because my whip crack just was not good enough.

“For me on a personal level I managed to nail that over the last couple of challenges and it has made a huge difference.”

Field said while the series has been happening on and off for years, 2023 is the first time there have been five challenges.

“Last year we only did it out of three challenges,” she said.

“In the past there has only been maybe one or two or three challenges within the series.

“We have just been trying to work together and trying to make it grow and then ideally the more challenges the better because then it makes it a bit more of an open competition.

“It entices people to do all of them to collect as many points as they can to obviously be in the running to win the prizes because we actually did prizes right down to sixth place.”