Photo with kind permission by Nico Morgan for E.S. Photography
Ian Stark has long been something of a living legend in the eventing world, with his “grey boys”, Glenburnie and of course the inimitable Murphy Himself, but also Sir Wattie who won Badminton twice. A third Badminton on Jaybee, as well as too many medals to mention, including at three Olympic Games, an MBE and then an OBE…like I said, living legend!
As Mark Todd demonstrated when he won the Mitsubishi Badminton Horse Trials this spring, legends don’t retire – they come back and plunder the 4* events, so it was less surprising than it might have been to see Ian’s name on the Luhmuhlen entry list a few weeks ago. Sadly, however Ian will NOT be riding at Luhmuhlen this weekend as he’d originally planned. As he explained to me, he realised at Bramham that he just didn’t have the time to do the horse justice. As he went on to tell me about everything else he has going on, I’m surprised, and incredibly grateful that he could spare the time it took to talk to me at all!
Ian’s horse, Looks Similar, was originally campaigned by his daughter Stephanie, until she fell pregnant,
“In 2007 I had stopped riding completely, I retired at Kentucky (at Rolex after placing 11th in the CCI****) and I wasn’t intending on riding, but then Stephanie’s horse had got to two star, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to ride any higher, then she was having babies. We were going to sell the horse and it needed a bit more work before we sold out so I decided to ride it myself.”
and with that Ian simultaneously came out of his retirement and became a grandfather.
Since then Looks Similar has been steadily progressing through the grades with his newer, older rider with some consistent advanced placings, 10th place in the CCI *** at Saumur last year, and a couple of solid advanced runs this spring. However, whilst working as Course Designer at the Bramham International Horse Trials, Ian came to terms with the fact that he just didn’t have enough time,
“Designing has really taken over my life now, so I haven’t got time to ride him; some weeks I can ride four or five of those days, but at other times I’m lucky if I can ride once a week, and you can’t ride at four star level like that – it’s not fair on the horse and you just can’t be consistent enough. I went to Bramham last week, and I took him with me and did the guinea pig test, and I was going to do the show-jumper/eventer relay thing on the Sunday, but by the time Sunday came I felt as if I’d hit a brick wall. I just haven’t got enough time or energy to put into the horse so I spoke to Nicola Wilson, and I’ve given the horse to her to ride. She’s just going to get to know him, do a couple of Open Intermediates, and then hopefully we’ll aim at the new CIC *** at Hopetoun House in Edinburgh at the end of July, and then go on and do Blair Castle CCI ***; if that goes well then she might aim at Pau CCI **** in October.”
This will make Hopetoun House Horse Trials doubly exciting, as Ian has taken on the course designing here in 2011, it’s sixteenth anniversary and the first time they’ll host a CIC ** and CIC ***. I asked Ian whether it was more difficult to start a course from scratch, as in this case, or to take over someone else’s work and try and adapt it to them?
“It’s very different, and every site is different. I started about seven years ago because the Devonshire’s who own most of my horses are at Chatsworth, and Mike Etherington-Smith and the Duchess asked me to do the novice, and until then I’d never even considered designing, but I gave it a go and I quite liked it. So it’s built from there, and I like doing both: if you go into a green-field site for the first time, what I tend to do is first pick out my feature areas, where I want to have exciting fences, and then try and build a flow around it, and you’ve got to think about your start and finish and all that. It’s very exciting if it’s not been a course before because you can let your imagination run riot. If it’s an existing event, so far I’ve been quite lucky that I’ve been allowed to move the start and finish, and do what I wanted at different places, but it does get quite expensive. Everyone eventually decides to ask me whether I listen to the budget, but it doesn’t really interest me I have to confess, I like to let my imagination go!”
I wondered if, with all of Ian’s vast experience, he had to stop himself from designing courses purely that he would like to jump around himself in order to cater for eveyone, and he laughs,
“Well, everyone that rides my courses says that they can just imagine me riding it on the old, grey boys again – Murphy Himself and Glenburnie! In my heyday, as it were, in the 80’s and 90’s, the sport was different, and it then became very technical and twisty and what I call arena exercises – you’d go galloping across the field and then you’d have a cluster of fences that were twisty and technical and that pulled the horses around, and then you’d have another gallop until you got to the next cluster, and to me that wasn’t really what cross-country riding was about, and so I’ve slightly gone back to the old-fashioned idea of big and bold, and the rider-frighteners, but then I’ve added a mixture of the skinnies and technical lines. That’s much more about riding to me than pulling a horse around all over the place, that’s been my main aim. That probably is what I wanted to ride, and what I design.”
Speaking of the flying grey, Murphy Himself, I suggest that perhaps if Ian were riding him today, we might not have the privilege of seeing him cruise round all those courses in such an amazing fashion, for I venture to say he might be pulled up for dangerous riding? Ian laughs again,
“The only thing about Murphy was that he was fast, and he was brave, but he wasn’t going to have an accident. Within the sport we have to be very careful now: if people look dangerous, then they’re either given 25 penalties or they’re pulled up on the track, but I think they have to be careful not to take away a horse’s natural ability as long as it’s within safety parameters. The thing about Murphy was he was very strong, and my job was to try and get him at the fences at the right sort of pace, and if he took a stride out that was his choice, it wasn’t because I was riding for that, that was just an exceptionally bold horse. I think it’s a difficult situation for officials now to know whether to pull somebody up, or stop them and give them penalties for dangerous riding. A brave horse, a bold horse, a quick-thinking horse is completely different to something out of control and reckless.”
Between Ian and Derek Di Grazia’s courses, which I’ve been lucky enough to see at Rolex and Bromont this year and are similar in concept, perhaps this is an encouraging trend,
“Fortunately, whether it was me or not, I think more people are heading towards the more open, galloping fences and courses and I think it’s much nicer to watch. From a rider’s point of view, it’s much nicer to ride too. The riders give me a bit of stick saying my distances seem quite long, and the fences look big and terrifying, but when they’ve ridden it they feel that they’ve had a good time and the horse has grown in confidence, so as long as that keeps happening that’s great. At Tattersalls a couple of weeks ago, one of the older riders was in the showers and she heard two, young Irish lads standing outside talking about the course, and they were saying, ‘you know, they say it’s an old-fashioned course, but the problem is we don’t how to ride old-fashioned’! They didn’t quite understand my tracks. At Bramham last year a lot of the Young Riders came to me and said, ‘we didn’t do a great job round your course, but we love your tracks and next year we’ll learn how to ride it and we’ll come back’, and I thought that was quite a good attitude from some of the Young Riders.”
Photo by Sally Newcomb with kind permission of Badminton Horse Trials
Ian welcomes feedback, and told me he gets plenty of it, which he finds helpful,
“I’ve been very lucky; a lot of the older, experienced riders come and tell me what they think of the track before they’ve ridden it, and then come back and tell me afterwards, and whilst sometimes they’re quite blunt and honest, it’s very helpful, and also the fact that I’ve ridden some of my own tracks helps; it’s all very well designing, but if you actually have to go out and ride it, then you’ll see if what you’re imagining while you’re designing is what you’re actually getting at a particular fence, that’s been quite helpful to keep my eye in for the designing.”
Of course I had to ask Ian which of his courses he’d ridden,
“I rode Chatsworth about four weeks ago, and I’ve ridden at Central Scotland a couple of times, it is quite useful. You tend to think you’ve given a softer question until you ride it, and then suddenly you think, ‘wow, that rode really big, and I thought that was a bit softer.’ Other things that you think might be a bit technical and it rides like a gymnastic exerice, that I wouldn’t necessarily change, but it’s just good to know how they do ride, so that when I’m designing future questions I have the right feel. When I rode cross country I always used to lie in bed the night before and go through the course in my head and imagine how the horses would jump it and what it would feel like, and I do the same now that I’m designing: imagine how it would feel if I was riding my course, so to every now and then jump some of your own fences just makes you realise whether you’re on the right track or not. I’m not allowed under FEI rules to ride my own tracks but I can ride at the national levels up to OI and Advanced. I would have quite like to have ridden Bramham this year, but I wasn’t allowed to!”
Although Ian already definitely has a trademark style, he said he’s not worried about being pigeonholed as a certain type,
“The courses that I design are so different in terrain that they have their own personality. I try to work with what I’ve got; for example Tattersalls is Meath Hunting country so there’s lots of big ditches so I made a feature of the ditches. Bramham is very, very rolling countryside which is almost tempting to over-use, but you use the natural features. Galway Downs in California is very flat, so there’s a lot of man-made hills; you just make use of what’s there, rather than trying to re-create questions that worked in one event in one country in another. When I get to venues the ground almost tells me what it wants with the lay of the land, and natural features.”
Luckily Ian can’t think of any particular fence that he really regrets or considers a disaster, but admits to some misgivings about a fence on last year’s Bramham course,
“I think I probably over-thougt the water jump and I made it too intense, but I hadn’t made the alternative time-consuming enough so for a few seconds it was much safer to go the long route. I think there was only about 11 that jumped the direct route, three had problems, and everybody else took the long way round. So I learnt from that to a) make the long routes very time-consuming, and b) I learnt very much not to over-analyse and over-think the fence as a question. Quite often I’d go and look at an area, and in my head I’d imagine what it should be, and I think at Bramham I was trying so hard to get it right that it eventually became too complex, so I’ve learned a very good lesson very early. Now I go with my gut feeling. If I lie in bed at night and wake up, which I do regularly thinking about my courses, but if I’m waking up and thinking about one particular fence, then I change it.”
Ian considers Mike Etherington-Smith his biggest influence and mentor, and still seeks advice from him,
“He helped me a lot; he helped me get my eye in. He still does – he comes and walks all my main tracks, and then he goes away and thinks about them and then he comes back and just occasionally comes up with the odd comment, sometimes we just have to agree to disagree! We all have our own ideas about what horses should be jumping or what way the courses are going, and we also have our own ideas about what we think horses are capable of, and that’s a good thing that we’re all a little bit different, but Mike has probably been the main help in my designing.”
Ian thinks it’s a good thing that most course designers have a competitive riding background,
“I think at the end of the day, whether you’re competing or designing, you’re still very competitive. I think it’s very important that people have ridden to quite a high level if they’re going to design to a high level because a lot of people have good ideas but they’re looking at the mechanics of the horse and how they work, but they’ve never had the feel to jump certain questions, and I think to have ridden at high levels certainly helps.”
Unfortunately for his hordes of fans, Ian no longer does clinics, partly due to time restraints, and also partly due to doctor’s orders,
“Since I had that brain hemorrhage about 21 months ago, the medics have said I’ve got to give myself time but I’m not very good at that! I don’t think they knew that I was back riding at a high level, and designing and everything else, no, but I can’t do everything!”
The “everything else” also includes about 30 days a year disciplinary stewarding at race courses for the Jockey Club, something Ian enjoys. He said he’d always been interested in racing, and actually point-to-pointed and trained pointers for 12 years. Surprise surprise, Ian shares that he’s not a very good spectator (!), but once he had a proper job to do, enjoys going to the races much more!
And of course the all important grandfatherly duties,
“I love that, it’s great; I like to wind the boys up and get them very over-excited, and then hand them back! It’s called getting your own back on your children!”
Ian promises that he doesn’t see another return from retirement to riding, but he does have lofty ambitions for his course designing when I ask him which track would be his ultimate dream to design, which can only be doubly good news for the competitors out there,
“Probably Badminton to be honest; that’s been my favourite event as a rider, and I’d love to have a go at that at some point. And the Olympics. And the WEGs, (laughs!) If I’m going to get really greedy, I want the whole lot! Seriously, though, I would love to be able to design a four star at some point, that would be quite nice.”
Quite nice indeed for all involved. I’d like to extend my warmest, heartfelt thanks to Ian for his time, and wish Nicola the best of luck on Looks Similar. Thank you reading as always, and Go Eventing!
