Classic Eventing Nation

Tuesday News & Notes from Legends Horse Feeds

By on Jan 11, 2022 6:55 am -

It’s a jolly good week to be British eventer Bubby Upton! The talented young rider, who made her five-star debut at Pau and is currently finishing her final year of university, has been given three exciting new rides. Two of them come from the string of Australia’s Chris Burton, who she shares a yard with at the Chedington Estate, owned by the Guy family. Their horses Jefferson and Clever Louis, the latter of which won the 2019 Blenheim eight- and nine-year-old CCI4*-S in 2019, will now be campaigned by Bubby, as will the former Sam Griffiths ride Billy Liffy, who was produced to the upper levels by Liv Craddock. Expect big things to come from Team Upton this season!

Events Opening Today: Three Lakes Winter II H.T. at Caudle Ranch, Pine Top Advanced H.T.

Events Closing Today: Full Gallop Farm January H.T, Rocking Horse Winter I H.T.

Tuesday News & Notes from Around the World:

A tack trunk injury, a comically misplaced marching band, and perhaps the most fortuitous auction win ever – these are just some of the plot points that form the incredible story of Beth Perkins, who finished sixth in the 1974 World Championships with Furtive. Read all about her adventures at Burghley here.

If you’re anything like me, you spend the winter months guzzling iron supplements, hoping for a little bit more get-up-and-go as a result. But can feeding iron have similarly beneficial effects for your horse, or is it a potentially harmful minefield? Horse Sport explains it all.

Kiwi superstar Clarke Johnstone is heading to the UK for the 2022 season. This adds a formidable string to the Kiwi squad’s bow ahead of this year’s World Championships, though the team currently remains without a chef d’equipe after Graeme Thom stepped down at the end of 2021.

OTTB fans in the south-east, rejoice: New Vocations is officially opening an Ocala base, which will be located at Trillium Sport Horses in Anthony, and spearheaded by eventer Erin MacDonald.

And now, over to you: what’s your best advice for heading south for a winter of training? What do you wish you’d known the first time you went sun-chasing? Let us know, and your words of wisdom could be featured in a forthcoming article.

Video Break:

Relive 25 years of Pony Club Championships in Great Britain– and some fences that are a real throwback to another era! — with Total Recall.

Monday Video: A European Horse Shopping Trip with Elisa Wallace

By on Jan 10, 2022 4:30 pm -

Horse shopping in Europe is still a hot ticket for eventers seeking their next top ride. Elisa Wallace and her crew made a recent trip to find some news horses for the Wallace Eventing string, and she brought us along for the ride in her latest video vlog. Find out who’s catching a plane back to the States in the video above!

Thinking in Rhythm: Anne Kursinski on Transitions to Improve Balance

By on Jan 10, 2022 1:30 pm -

In this excerpt from Anne Kursinski’s Riding & Jumping Clinic, Olympian Anne Kursinski tells us how she schools transitions in order to improve balance and self-carriage in all her horses.

Photo by Amber Heintzberger.

Transitions — particularly downward transitions, both within a gait and from one gait to another — are a great way to encourage your horse to keep coming from back to front and to carry himself. You use leg to create whatever energy you need, hand to receive the energy and tell your horse what you want him to do with it, and seat to reinforce either the driving message of your leg or the containing message of your hand.

Whether the transition is upward or downward, you can also use your seat to make the change smooth rather than jarring by communicating to your horse the rhythm of the new gait that you want. Each gait has its own rhythm, of course: the four-beat walk, the two-beat trot, the three-beat canter, with variations depending on whether the gait is working, extended, or collected. I find that if you think the rhythm of the new gait that you want (like humming a song in your head, without making any audible noise), your seat and legs will automatically start telling your horse about it as you ask for the transition — or even as you’re just preparing to ask. The higher the level of communication between you, the more quickly he’ll pick up on your message and the smoother the transition will be.

If you want to go from the walk to the trot, “thinking” the trot rhythm will make your legs close a little more quickly, in the one-two of the trot, and help your horse pick up the rhythm in his body. As you feel the one-two rhythm begin, your upper body automatically tips slightly forward to stay with his center of gravity.

In a downward transition, say from the canter to the trot, putting the rhythm of the trot stride into the half-halts that you give while still cantering will let you make a smooth, balanced transition.

Downward transitions tend to be the bumpiest, because your horse has to shift his balance backward from where it’s been in the faster gait. (For the same reason, downward transitions are also where he’s most likely to become crooked — so you, as the brains of the operation, have to be on the lookout for straightness problems and be ready to apply appropriate corrections.) As you start taking his mouth to tell him to slow, he’s probably going to grab the bit — and pull you out of the saddle if you’re not ready for him. Here’s a place where thinking the rhythm really helps:

Quiet the swing of your hips and sit against your horse more, using your almost passive seat as a very short push against rather than with the motion to tell him you want shorter strides. I keep my hips relaxed, eyes up, elbows just in front of my hip bones — so my reins are a comfortable length and I’m thinking about my half-halt. I deepen my heels (think of yourself “growing” in the saddle), close my legs against the horse so that he gets off his forehand and comes up under himself (remember, any time he pulls against you, leg is what gets him light), and then take his mouth briefly, bending my elbows to ask him to stay light in front. Keeping your elbows bent prevents him from pulling you down and forward and keeps his poll up so that he stays off his nose.

When he answers the half-halt, I reward him by relaxing my elbows and easing my feel on his mouth, so that he knows this is what I wanted. I relax my legs as well, to tell him to trot, and “think” the trot rhythm with my seat. As he gets the trot rhythm, I make sure we maintain the nice, light balance, closing my legs to keep him moving actively into the bit from behind.

If your horse is very heavy, your first couple of “takes” may look rather jerky, because he’s going to expect to have something to lean on — so he’ll take more when he feels you give, which will make your next take have to be more forceful. Think of the motion as “lifting” him into the slower gait — so that he “sits” more behind and doesn’t fall down in front. As your horse finds out that you aren’t willing to let him balance himself by pulling against you, he’ll lighten and not fall forward so much.

And if you strengthen your leg or even add a prick of your spur the instant you feel him pull, you’ll accelerate the “Carry yourself!” learning process.

Keep sitting and lifting him slightly with your half-halts, bending your elbows. As you feel him trying to fall on his nose, sit in and sit up to bring his center of gravity back. With repetition, he’ll come to recognize that, when you open your hip angle and sit a little more deeply, you’re going to be asking him to come back — so he’ll start to do so on his own, and you’ll have less of a tug of war.

(That lifting feeling in your arms during the downward transition, by the way, is not a static pull but a little circle, resisting very slightly toward you, up, and forward again. The canter, particularly, is a circular gait in the way the horse comes off the ground into a moment of suspension, through the air, and then down again; your hips and your arms should have that same motion of lifting and giving, lifting and giving. You’re resisting in rhythm until he lightens, taking and giving in direct response to how strong he is against you.)

Anne Kursinski is a coach for the USEF Horsemastership Training Sessions, held annually for young riders in Wellington, Florida. Take a look at some quotable moments from this year’s training sessions:

USEF Horsemastership Training Series: Anne Kursinski

There were so many quotable moments in today's session with Anne Kursinski Riding and Jumping Mentor, it was impossible to pick just one! Watch what you missed from today on-demand thanks to Platinum Performance!

▶️ https://www.usef.org/network/coverage/2021horsemastership/

Posted by USEF Network on Friday, January 15, 2021

This excerpt from Anne Kursinski’s Riding & Jumping Clinic is reprinted with permission from Trafalgar Square Books (www.HorseandRiderBooks.com).

Building a Syndicate: How 39 Remarkable Women Got Behind A Dream

By on Jan 10, 2022 10:00 am -

Ema Klugman & Bronte Beach Z. Photo by Abby Powell.

In late 2017, I sent a WhatsApp video to my late coach, Packy McGaughan, of a gangly four-year-old mare trotting around and jumping a few fences with me. I had just tried her, and I liked the feeling she gave me. He replied, “buy it.”

Those two words were pretty rare from a horse trainer as choosy as Packy. Usually he would say something more like, “that looks scopeless” or “not quite right behind” or “it moves like a quarter horse.” He had a discerning, sometimes ruthless, eye. So when you got the stamp of approval from him while out looking at horses, you knew whatever you’d discovered was probably a good horse.

I sent the video to Marilyn Little, for whom I had been a working student that year, and she also liked the horse. We vetted her the next day, and named her Bronte Beach. Four years later, we moved up to the Advanced level and finished in the top-ten at her first CCI4*L.

In 2018, I found myself huddled among a group of young riders in a tent, listening to a lecture during the Bromont Rising program while the wind outside howled. We were fortunate to participate in a range of lectures with top industry professionals, from Peter Gray to Doug Payne. But the most formative one, in hindsight, was a session about how to get sponsors and owners.

There were a couple of individuals present at the session who had owned horses that went to the World Championships and Olympic Games. They described the fun and thrill of the experience, but also the heartbreak when a horse got sick or went lame before a big show. It was a huge investment for them, and quite a lot of pressure on the riders, as I began to realize.

Syndicate member Hallie Brooks with Bronte at Millbrook Horse Trials.

But what wasn’t clear to me was why someone would own a horse for a young rider when they could own one for Doug Payne or Jennie Brannigan or Phillip Dutton. I asked them, “why would someone like you want to support someone like me?”. I had less than two years of experience at the Advanced level. I had never won an international event. Their reply was telling: they said not to think of it that way, but rather to frame the question as “what can I offer this person, and what is unique about me that will make them want to join my journey?”.

I’m a bit of a weird eventing professional. For as long as I’ve been eventing, I’ve been in some kind of school. I moved up to the Advanced level when I was an undergraduate. I did my first five-star a few months before starting law school. I have a foot in both worlds, and my program is small. Furthermore, I do not plan to make eventing my full-time gig in the long-term; I want to have a career in law and policy while also competing at the top level. I don’t know many eventing professionals like me, but that’s okay. Still, if I wanted to make a go at this, I would need some additional support. I needed to work out how to attract people to join my journey.

Back to Bronte Beach: under Marilyn’s expert guidance, the mare was turning into as nice of a horse as we had hoped. I put together a syndicate packet for her and started sending it to just about everyone I knew. A couple of wonderful family friends invested in her, but I received far more “no’s” than I did “yes’s” when I asked people if they wanted to buy a share in the horse. After all, it’s not a way of making money: it is about being involved in a dream and loving the process of developing a horse. Bronte won several events as she moved up the levels, including her first 3*L in the fall of 2020. We were extremely excited about her and we wanted to get more people to join the syndicate.

I had met Elena Perea in the parking lot of the Duke Hospital in 2019 (No, I wasn’t dying, and she wasn’t my doctor). I was an undergraduate at the university and she was a doctor at the hospital, and we connected because she boarded her horse at a barn nearby that I was interested in moving my horses to. I hopped in her car and she drove me out there and showed me around generously. She was funny, smart, and witty; we got along right away. I moved my horses to that farm shortly after, started teaching her, and by the time I entered the Land Rover Kentucky Three-Day Event in 2021, she was a close enough friend that I asked her to help groom for me.

Ema Klugman and Bendigo. Photo by Shelby Allen.

My first five-star was an experience I’ll never forget, and it was made special by the people surrounding me. My unlikely partner, a Saddlebred/Thoroughbred called Bendigo, showed me the way that weekend, but he also did something else important that I did not expect. After I finished as the top young rider at Kentucky, people I was asking to get involved with my younger horses started to say “yes” instead of maybe or no. Bendigo had helped me prove that I could compete at the top of the sport, and now people were interested in joining syndicates to help my other horses get there, too.

After Elena groomed for me at Kentucky (including pulling off a couple of amazing tail braids!), she presented me with an idea: if she put a group of people together, could they collectively buy into Bronte Beach? I said that I was willing to be creative to make it work. I thought that she would get 5-10 people together to buy a share, but she came back to me with a proposal for 37 people to buy 15% of the horse. They were all women doctors who rode horses.

I was a little shocked, but she assured me that she would help with the organization and the moving parts. Fast forward several months and we have all had a fantastic time; Bronte had a great first season at the Advanced level. Better yet, because such a large group of people split that share, the buy-in and maintenance costs to each individual in the group are quite low. This group has led to connections who have also invested in Bronte and in another young horse I have called RF Redfern.

Ema Klugman and RF Redfern. Photo by Abby Powell.

There’s a clear chicken-and-egg problem here: to get noticed and get support, you need a horse to get you to the top, but to get to the top, you need support and a good horse. It was a total accident that Bendigo became a five-star horse; he was a four-figure purchase for a 15 year-old kid. You couldn’t repeat the story again in real life if you tried. But it was really after Kentucky that more people were willing to take a chance with me on the other horses.

Competing at the top level is expensive, and you need a few horses to make it work consistently. I’m 24, and I’m making my way. I’m learning a lot on this journey—about connecting with people, about being willing to be creative, and about figuring out what I have to offer. I’m extremely lucky. I work hard to provide weekly updates and videos to my owners. I invite them to our farm and to events, and I always try to be honest. I talk about our dreams but I’m also realistic. In the end, I’m very proud to ride Bronte Beach, owned by 39 extremely cool, funny, remarkable women who took a chance on a girl and her mare.

Monday News & Notes from FutureTrack

By on Jan 10, 2022 8:07 am -

 

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Okay, okay, so we try not to use this top spot in our News & Notes for advertising – but when I saw this post on my Insta feed, I actually audibly gasped, and I know a lot of you will be just as excited as I am about it. Lucinda Green and Ingrid Klimke on one webinar? Explaining to me why dressage schooling directly impacts cross-country performance? Oh my god, sign me up! The webinar will be tomorrow evening at 3.30 p.m. Eastern time, and I’d be willing to bet it’ll be one of the most valuable things you do this off-season.

National Holiday: Put your hand up if you’ve ever felt personally attacked by National Clean Your Desk Day.

Your Monday Reading List:

There was some hot debate on social media among some of the sport’s biggest names after EquiRatings released its list of 2021’s top event horses, ranked by their Elo rating. Now, in an effort to shed further light on the Elo and how it works – and why our current European champion and the Tokyo gold medallist don’t even feature on the list – they’ve teamed up with Horse&Hound to delve into the science behind the list.

Have you got your sites set on the top? Then you’ll want to read these nuggets of wisdom, collected through the year from the stars of equestrian sport.

If you followed Ireland’s Goresbridge Go For Gold sale this year, you’ll have noticed something – an awful lot of horses with an MBF prefix. Not only did an MBF horse become the top seller of the sale, they also dominated the catalogue – and the Irish Farmers Journal sat down with MBF’s Meabh Bolger to find out how they did it and why she loves a great Thoroughbred dam line.

Get to know Favian, Valerie Vizcarrondo Pride’s top-level partner-in-crime. He has an emotional support mini, and that’s pretty much all I needed to start crying this morning.

One can’t help but feel we’re heading closer to a major reckoning and the implementation of a SafeSport system in the UK. Certainly something needs to change, and the recent rape charges against showjumping coach John Sillett prove that point in spades.

The FutureTrack Follow:

 

Follow the Ebony Horse Club and see what life is like at a riding school in the heart of London – plus, you can check out the adventures of the resident riders, several of whom are pivoting into the racing industry after the success of Ebony rider Khadijah Mellah, who won the Magnolia Cup in 2019!

Morning Viewing:

Join Elisa Wallace as she heads across the pond in search of a superstar.

#EventerProblems Vol. 281: What Resolutions?

By on Jan 9, 2022 10:00 am -

If you’ve ever made and promptly broken a New Year’s resolution, this edition of #EventerProblems is dedicated to you — and trust us, we’re already off the wagon, too. Maybe next year? Let’s see what you all have been up to in this young new year.

Tag your public social media posts with #eventerproblems for inclusion in a future edition!

Editor’s Note: There is some strong language contained in the posts embedded below.

Sunday Links from Fairfax & Favor

By on Jan 9, 2022 12:01 am -

No scope no hope. Photo by Abby Powell.

So after not visiting the barn on Friday after my area’s first substantial snowstorm of the year, I thoroughly enjoyed myself yesterday. I am a firm believer of taking some time to just play with one’s horse and not do anything serious from time to time. Snow is a great excuse to do just that, so yesterday I puttered around our snow-filled outdoor ring enjoying the feeling of disturbing the pristine patches of precipitation. I let my pony enjoy wandering around on the buckle while my dog showed off his impeccable form over fences.

Sunday Links:

Advice from Equestrian Stars to Young Hopefuls

‘Largest pot in the event’s history’: Burghley Horse Trials first prize hits six figures

Ireland produces “blueprint” for equine genetic improvement

Voice Recognition: How Horses Respond to Voice

Watch live foaling cams in season 5 of Foal Patrol

Sunday Video: Take us back to Maryland!

Fairfax & Favor Fan of the Week:

 

 

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Just a Few More London 52 Antics to Brighten Your Day

By on Jan 8, 2022 4:00 pm -

Winter naughties are in full swing as event horses the world over begin to emerge from their holidays. We’re always kept entertained here at EN by the everlasting antics of Tokyo gold medalist London 52, who keeps partner Laura Collett on her toes (well, hopefully not anyway — have you seen the girl’s seat?) during the first jump schools of a new season. Let’s catch up with what London 52’s been up to this week:

First, a lesson with top show jumper Jay Halim, who’s advice is to “stop laughing at him” (we’re trying, Jay, we’re trying):

And a couple of other bucking parties, along with some memories from past seasons (hint: London 52’s seasons always start the same way!):

Good times and as always, well sat Laura! We’re guessing there aren’t many dull moments to be found on her yard.

Go Eventing.

Your Turn: What’s Your Best Advice for a First Time Trip South for Winter Training?

By on Jan 8, 2022 10:00 am -

Photo by Leslie Wylie.

The Ocala and Aiken migration is well underway, and many eventers are high-tailing it south for warmer temperatures and the opportunity to get a jump start on prep for the upcoming season. For many amateur riders, a trip to Aiken or Ocala is a major bucket list item — but it can be tricky to pull off without the right planning. After all, it’s hard to pack up and leave (with your horse!) when you have a family, a job, other horses, clients, or anything other semblance of a busy life.

Whether it be for a long weekend or a few months, a trip south can be a memorable one that also makes a difference by providing opportunity to focus on and enjoy your horse. If you haven’t made the trek yourself, there are a lot of questions to answer and the process can be overwhelming.

So we’re tapping into the think tank that is our EN community. We want to know: what’s your best advice for a first-timer heading south this winter?

Use the form below or click here to send us your response. We’ll select some responses to gather into a story coming later! You can also post your advice as a comment on this post or on social media.

Saturday Links

By on Jan 8, 2022 12:01 am -

Photo by Abby Powell

The first major snowstorm of the season hit my area yesterday (which feels odd to say, because it seems like everywhere south of me has already been dumped on) and with the all-day precipitation making the roads pretty messy, it was wise for me to sit tight at my desk job and forgo a visit to the barn. I’m already appreciative on a day-to-day basis for the amazing staff at the barn where I board by horse, but snow stormy days like these always make me extra, EXTRA appreciative of everything they do to make sure the critters in their care are safe and comfortable.

Saturday Links:

USEF Horsemastership Series: 5 Flatwork Takeaways From Anne Kursinski

How Self-Conscious Riders Can Feel More Confident Riding in a Crowded Ring

Do Horses Feel Empathy?

Full-Time Horse Trainer & Pregnant: Is it Really Possible?

Travel Tips for a Healthy and Happy Horse

Saturday Video: Here’s what happens when Buck Davidson challenges a couple fellow upper-level riders to no-hands-no-reins jumping competition!

 

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