With all the excitement from Fair Hill last week, we unfortunately missed out on publishing Vicky Madsen’s guest blog from France. Our apologies to Vicky for posting it so late! Check back tomorrow for this week’s edition of Vicky’s blog leading up to Pau CCI4*.
Vicky Madsen is a British event rider who currently competes at 4* level on her homebred horse By Crikey (William). Vicky has recently made the move to the South of France from Belgium and this blog will follow her as she prepares for Pau 4* and a leap into the unknown of life in France. Previous entries: [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3].
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From Vicky:
It’s been all go here, in fact maybe too much! End of last week I had a super gallop session on the hills here with William, one of those days where I’m thankful I have such a fun horse to ride and that we’ve been given the opportunity to move to such a picturesque place. I went up the incline 4 times, and he really towed me up the last section every time, I was barely anchoring him in the pelham, although he knows where we pull up, so it’s more a question of regulating speed during the gallop!
Two days later we had a dressage lesson, and he was far more difficult than normal to load, then just wasn’t interested. Physically there didn’t seem to be anything amiss, he just didn’t want to be there and be working. Tough stuff, as if there’s a mechanical problem you can fix it, whether through feed, training, management tweaks or whatever. I discussed his routine in detail with Jean-Paul and he told me just to back off for a few days, and to let him tell me when he wanted to work again. Doing nothing, or as good as, is pretty challenging this close to Pau! Tell me to go out and train for 5 hours every day or suchlike and I’m happy, tell me to do nothing and I’m a bit meep! He also told me to knock off the number of times up the hill in his gallop work, so he doesn’t over-do it.
I’m pleased to report it seems to have worked. He had a day off after that, a massage from Karen Gunn who lives locally, then the next two days just went for a long walk on a long rein. Since then he’s had another gallop
session, but just twice up the same hill, a couple of flatwork sessions – I even got some photos from today’s – and a really fantastic jumping session using a little gymnastic exercise, where thanks to tall stands and a tall
friend helping with poles we ended up cantering rather nonchalantly over a 145cm ascending spread, well out of our usual comfort zone!
So the good news from all that is that physically he seems to be doing well. The problem with equine athletes is we can’t explain to them that their intense work regime is for “just one more week”, and it’s so easy to
get caught up like I did in the train harder, faster, longer, better line of thinking. In the remaining time before Pau we’ll have one more dressage lesson, a couple of gallops, but just going up the two times, and one or
two jumps, interspersed with some slow hacking and flatwork sessions.
Tingasix jumping
I’ve thrown myself into the TBs somewhat to keep myself busy in the mean time. Arodd impresses me more and more every time I ride him. I’ve started hacking him now too and he’s a joy. Ideally I’ll find an owner for him, and I’ll be able to spend the Winter preparing him (mostly mentally) for an eventing career starting next Spring. Chiara is being given time to chill, and I’ll start doing some gentle work with her after Pau. Tingasix is a new
arrival, also a TB but never raced, here’s a photo of her first session jumping. She’s a really lovely mare to work with, very straightforward, I think she will be easy to sell as will suit so many different riders. Jonas is also a TB who was already here when we arrived, she’s been back in work a month and is coming along nicely, although we’ve a long way to working on her topline she is very rewarding to work with as you can see from her
sweet face.
Thanks for reading!
Vx
Trotting on a youngster
