Gonda Betrix


Gonda Betrix is a South African female rider who has won numerous show jumping competitions over her 40-year career. She won Springbok colours and won the South African individual show jumping competition ten times. She represented South Africa at the 1992 Summer Olympics in individual show jumping. For her riding skills she was rewarded with three sports merit awards, as well as the State Presidential Award in 1974.

Biography

Early life

Gonda Joyce Butters was born on 28 August 1943 in Cape Town, South Africa. She started riding at the age of 4, and at the age of 8 won her first under 18 Provincial show jumping competition.
At twelve she and her horse Gunga Din broke a South African high jump record with a jump of. She made her international debut in the same year. She left school at 14 to focus on show jumping and her parents took her to the UK, where she competed and studied under Col. Ian Hume-Dudgeon, a world renowned instructor at the time. In the same year, 1958, she won the South of England Championship and finished second in the British National Championship.

Career

She won junior Springbok colours in 1958 and senior Springbok colours in 1962. Between 1962 and 1992 she won the South African individual show jumping competition ten times. In 1992, she participated in the Olympic Games in Barcelona on a loaned horse, Tommy 29.
Her last major victory was in 1994 when she won the Swiss Ladies International Championship in Geneva, Switzerland.
She retired in 1995 to focus on coaching.

Honours, decorations, awards and distinctions

In 1992, she wrote a part-autobiography, part training manual with Julia Attwood-Wheeler.