Kim Bradley is attending the O’Connor Event Team Camp down in Lexington, Virginia this week, and graciously agreed to write a post about her time at camp thus far. According to Kim, the first couple days of camp are designed to review the basics with a lot of lecturing and flatwork, but now have made way for the more exciting parts of camp, the jump lessons, the cross country practice, and of course the infamous ride down the ‘Man from Snowy River’ hill. Thanks to Kim for writing this, and of course thank you for reading.
From Kim:
I write this midway through my fifth O’Connor Eventing Camp. Why have I gone to one camp five times? Am I that slow to learn?
Well, sure. But I firmly believe that one never stops learning (just yesterday, famed OCET team member Max Corcoran showed me how to use a girth buckle to open a bottle of beer–something I firmly believe every eventer should know) and I also believe that we learn what we are ready to be taught. “When the student is ready, the teacher appears,” is some sort of Hindu or Buddhist or something saying (I haven’t learned that part yet), and I believe it’s true. Every year at camp, Team O’Connor teaches the same system. Every year I learn something new.
Five years ago, my game little tank of a horse, Gully, and I went to a horse trial in late spring and by some miracle finished third after the dressage in Novice Rider. We moved up to second in show jumping that afternoon, and the next morning I entered the start box for my favorite phase knowing that if I went clear I would get a golden ticket to the AECs, which seemed both wildly improbable and more fun than Christmas. I kicked Gully forward and everything went to hell. Gully’s enthusiasm for cross country had grown to outstripboth my knowledge and my ability: I had a choice between letting him gallop blindly at the fences, or getting into a fistfight in front of each one. I finished, clear, exhausted, and appalled.
My trainer said, “Great job! You’re ready to move up to Training!”
I waited for her to start laughing and say she was kidding, but she didn’t. She’d watched my ride. She actually thought I was ready to move up. I walked toward the barn thinking, “I have got to figure out what the heck I am doing, or I am going to kill my horse.”
Which brought me to OCET Camp Year One. In my first jump lesson Karen bellowed, “When I tell you to slow down, I at least want to SEE YOUR SHOULDERS MOVE!” At the time I found this amusing. By the final day I was jumping in control. Astonished, amazed–and it stuck. Three months later at the AECs I thrilled myself by being able to gallop forward, slow down, gallop forward, slow down. It was magic.
It made me safer. There’s no actual event training where I live (my former trainer moved 800 miles away) and I end up learning piecemeal from this dressage trainer and that jumper rider, with a dose of eventing clinicians thrown in. It’s imperfect, but I don’t have a choice. But I come back and back to camp, eager to learn more.
Year two I figured out part of my issues with straightness. Year three I quite throwing my upper body forward, and started to work on my hands. Year four we tackled some serious show jumping issues caused mainly by my never quite having learned how to show jump in the first place (“Just kick and go” doesn’t work at Training level.) Year five-this one–well, today I figured out something about my hips that I think will really help our dressage. I learned that I have to be on Gully’s case every stride if I want him to stay straight. And I learned that I’m a much better jumper than I was last year.
But there’s another reason I’m a frequent camper, and here she is:
My daughter. My thirteen-year-old homebred eventer. As much as I want knowledge for my own sake, I want it double for hers. Katie started off auditing camp, but now she rides–and the week of camp seems to do her more good than half a year’s worth of weekly lessons from trainers who don’t event. She’s brave and confident and strong, and some of that comes from Karen, David, Cathy, and Lauren. Going to camp with her is a blast. We love this week; we look forward to it all year. I know how fortunate I am to be able to be a frequent camper, and I intend to make the most of that good fortune.
Until next year–kick on.
