Bruce Goodin - Olympics Report

For the past few days, my writing group was learning to link paragraphs. Our success criteria was that we had to use phrases such as "As well as... He also...". We had to choose a New Zealand Olympian competitor to write about, and I chose Bruce Goodin.

Bruce Goodin is a 51 year old man who does equestrian (horse) show jumping, and cross country. He does it individually and with a team. He was in the New Zealand equestrian team for the Olympics this year. The reason why I chose him was because I do horse riding myself, and I wanted to find out about the people who are actually riding to compete in the Olympics.

It was quite tricky to find the information, because most sites didn't have much of the stuff I was looking for. I enjoyed writing about him because I learnt about his techniques, and about his horses, but next time I would change the order I wrote my paragraphs in.

Here is my report, and I hop you enjoy reading it:

Bruce Goodin

His name is Bruce Goodin. He was born on the tenth of October 1969. His hometown is Huntly, Waikato District, NZ. He is fifty one years old. When he was younger, Bruce Goodin went to Te Kauwhata College. 

As well as being David Goodin’s son, famed show jumper and cross-country competitor, he is husband to Ulrika, who represented Sweden in equestrian jumping. They also have a nine year old daughter named Elizabeth, who grew up on their farm.

Bruce Goodin also grew up on a farm, and started riding at age seven. His father was a rider, and always had horses and ponies around him. At first he didn’t like the sport, because he didn’t think he was any good. But when he was in his mid-teens he started to really enjoy it.

He in fact started to enjoy the sport so much that it grew into a real passion. He went on to become a horse breeder, equestrian athlete, coach, and horse trainer. His ambition was to compete in the Tokyo Olympics, and he got to be in the team. One of his most memorable moments was when he won the team competition at the 2018 Nations Cup in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. His hero was the British show jumper, John Whitaker. Both his father and his wife have competed in equestrian events.

Bruce Goodin’s personal philosophy is this: “It is about personal development, not a quick fix. It is about things being right for the horse, not for the rider's ego.” He has now competed at five different Olympic games. Athens 2004, Beijing 2008, Sydney 2000, Barcelona 1992, and Tokyo 2021.