We hear all the time about horses at the top of the sport, but what about the next generation of equine talent? EN’s Got Talent introduces the future superstars of the sport, interviewing riders about how they’re tackling training with these youngsters. Have you spotted a spectacular young horse at an event you think should be highlighted in this column? Tip me at [email protected].
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Andrew Palmer and Tatendrang. Photo by Aly Rattazzi of Rather Be Riding Photography.
Tatendrang, a 7-year-old Trakehner stallion owned by Anissa Cottongim and campaigned by Andrew Palmer, stepped into the limelight when he won the inaugural CHC International CIC* at Chattahoochee Hills last month. It was a gratifying outcome for the horse’s first one-star, especially when you consider how far he’s come since beginning his training under Andrew’s tutelage. “Tate” — who is sired by the elite Trakehner stallion Onassis, who is also the damsire of Seacookie TSF, William Fox-Pitt’s second-placed mount at this year’s Rolex, and out of Tanzania by Avignon II — came to Andrew with about 90 days under saddle.
“He had decided in that time that rearing was a good idea, and the trainer who had him before me called and said that he’d just started rearing, and she didn’t want to make it a big issue right before he came to me,” Andrew said. “So she just backed off of him a little bit, which was a really good idea on her part. He was 4, he was tall, and there was nothing malicious about it. When he played around, he was just very big and very playful.” Andrew quickly discovered that Tate couldn’t figure out how to rear if you turned him to the right. “It was a simple fix, luckily,” Andrew said. “Saddle fit was a bit of an issue too.”
Andrew Palmer and Tatendrang. Photo by Aly Rattazzi of Rather Be Riding Photography.
With Tate’s rearing issues behind him, Andrew began focusing on Anissa’s main goal for the horse in those early days: completing a novice event to fulfill the performance requirement for his stallion testing. “When I got him on the cross-country course, everything was so natural for him,” Andrew said. “He was this huge skeleton with not much muscle, so I was tentative about schooling him much. I would have to pick a time when I would quit because he would jump everything we put in front of him. It was hard to pace him in the beginning, but I was worried because he was still growing.”
Within six months, Tate had that first novice event under his belt, which brought along the next challenge in his training. “He had stops at the water at the first two or three events,” Andrew said. “He would go in the water, but he would have to stop and check it out. It wasn’t something I was too worried about, and it wasn’t something I wanted to push him through too hard. If you try to push too hard with a stallion, they will quit on you. So we took our time at novice. We tried to take him to multiple courses like Rocking Horse and Poplar where he had two chances to run through the water.”
A series of unfortunate events ultimately cured Tate of his water aversion. “We have automatic waterers in our barn, and one of the stallions broke his, which flooded all the stalls,” Andrew said. “We came into the barn the next morning, and Tate was standing in four inches of water. After that, he never had another refusal in water.” Tate progressed well through novice, but Andrew wanted to wait until the horse turned 5 to move him up to training. “We tried to pace him by his age, and I stayed pretty committed to that,” Andrew said. “We didn’t want to run prelim until he was 6, mostly because he was still doing a lot of growing.
Next week on EN’s Got Talent: We’ll learn all about Tate’s progression through the levels at training and prelim, as well as break down his winning weekend at CHC International. “When I went to Chatt Hills, one of the first dressage rides on another stallion went into the lead for the majority of the class,” Andrew said. “I was glued to the live scoring. Everybody started creeping in and getting really close to that score. And right as I was about to go out and get on Tate, I saw that I had just lost the lead. That was just the motivation I needed to get on Tate and push him just a little bit more.”
