Young Midgley fast becoming a hero of Westerns after taking national title

He is not even your average equestrian rider.

But through the art of Western Riding the Parkside College pupil is a national champion and one destined to only get better.

Midgley was recently crowned the Western Horseman Association’s national youth champion of 2012 in Nottingham, despite having had barely two year’s experience of Western Riding.

But the teenager is at pains to stress his art form is no rodeo or bucking bronco act, merely a different form of riding which has proved love at first sight.

Midgley’s mother Judith is responsible for his equestrian upbringing but for the Denholme youngster traditional riding methods have never really captured his imagination.

However, a visit to a friend’s Western Riding trekking centre a few years ago ignited a passion that has hugely blossomed during 2012.

Midgley recognises his sporting interest is somewhat different and unusual.

“When you say ‘I ride Western’ everybody instantly thinks that you are riding bucking broncos and bulls all the time,” Midgley told the Yorkshire Post.

“But it’s the complete opposite. Everyone has a connotation that it is like the old-fashioned Wild West with shooting guns and things but it is nothing like that and the Western style of riding is actually a lot more relaxed.

“The horses have a lot more freedom but you are still under control.

“For example, I’ll ride with a massive loop in my reins because I don’t need to have contact all the time whereas English riders would make the horse work on the bit all the time with the frothing at the mouth and that type of thing.

“There are two categories – speed and showing events and I just do the showing events.

“The speed events are still relaxed but that is a lot more chucking around like the typical rodeo kind of thing.

“But the showing side is nothing like that.”

Midgley’s success at the recent nationals was all the more remarkable given that this time last year the teenager considered his equestrian future to be in the field of tent pegging for which he had just represented the GB youth team in South Africa.

Tent pegging – where riders use a lance to pick up targets off the ground – is clearly another lesser-known branch of equestrian and Midgley admits he was always seeking something that little bit different.

“My mum always rode the traditional style of riding but I never liked it,” he said.

“Everything seemed so serious and the horses didn’t seem so relaxed.

“Then one day we went to a friend’s Western trekking centre and I just found it a completely difference experience. I loved it.

“I rode a load of youngsters – breaking and schooling and things like that for a year and then I got my own quarter-horse called Bandit, who is now five.

“We have been riding ever since – for about two years now.”

All this whilst still juggling his school work – Midgley is studying A-levels in sociology, psychology and PE at Cullingworth’s Parkside College and intent on going to university to study sociology.

He only wishes there was a university for western riding.

“That would be brilliant and while I’d hate to say that horses come first, horses do come first!” he joked.

“I’d love to have my own yard one day and do breaking and schooling. That would just be perfect.

“But I’d need a place for that so I’m going to go to do sociology, hopefully at uni, play it safe and if a yard comes along I will jump at the chance.”