Contributor Madison Ricard recently relocated her talented string of jumpers to a dressage barn which welcomed her with open arms, but it did mean having to get creative developing her own jump equipment. Madison has kindly agreed to share her secrets with us over the next few weeks in a series of DIY arena gear!
From Madison:
Looking for an easy, compact way to store your jumps? At our barn, we don’t have a lot of space for jump storage, so my dad decided do build a jump cart using a wheeled cart frame he purchased at Princess Auto. He built the remaining structure out of 2x6s and 2x4s. The cart can hold a full ten-jump course, while not taking up too much space!
There is storage space for uprights, rail storage on the outer “wings” and plank storage in the middle of the frame. There is also space on the top for large items: we put our “box” lunging standards here (a post on that later!).
In total, the cart can comfortably fit 24 of our uprights, with 4 sliding in beneath each “wing” of the frame. For rails, each “wing” can hold up to 8 rails, but we generally put only 6 because they get sorted by color. We also have two sets of three-planks, which slide in on either side of the middle beam shown in the photo, with room for 2 more sets as well.
Here’s a photo of it when it’s mostly full:
Note that we have more than four standards in each “wing” here, because we did not use the space on the far side because of the wall. If the extra jump rails hadn’t been underneath the cart, we would have pulled the cart away from the wall to put everything away properly!
Overall, this cart holds enough materials for a full course! Plus, it has a hitch on it so it can be towed by the ATV if it needs to be moved.
Stay tuned to see more on filler boxes, poles, and more!
Madison Ricard of ThreeBaysJumping.com grew up on the Arabian show circuit, but was bitten by the show jumping bug at an early age. As a teenager, she and her two intrepid Arabians took the show jumping world by storm, with great success up to 1.10m. After taking down one too many rails with her own feet, she moved onto bigger warmbloods who actually take up her long legs. Her current show string is Manny, Diego and Seven (the three bays in Three Bays Jumping!), competing up to 1.30m. She is most likely found either at the barn, or studying for her veterinary degree.