Gavin Makinson wrote an awesome IEF report for us last year, and you may remember a profile Samantha did on him as well. We also mentioned a few weeks ago that he’d kindly be reporting on this year’s IEF for us, and Gavin created his formal introduction video on last week, as well as Part 2 yesterday. Many thanks to Gavin for coming on board and presenting this wonderful write-up of the 2013 International Eventing Forum.
Gavin Makinson and Oliver Cromwell
SESSION 3: Course Designer vs. Coach – Mike Etherington-Smith and David O’Connor
David O’Connor and Mike Etherington Smith are two of the sport’s most experienced people in their field. Mike has been at the top of the course designing game for the last twenty years and David, as a rider and now trainer, at least the same. This session was a fascinating meeting of two closely related but competing worlds.
There were three guinea pigs for this session, of varying degrees of experience and on different types of horses. The first was Millie Dumas, a young rider in Great Britain on her horse Artistiek, an 8 year old KWPN about to move up to Advanced. The second was Neil Spratt, a 4* rider from New Zealand, on CMC Karma, a 7 year old CCI* mare by Ricardo Z. The final contestant was Caroline Powell, a well known 4* rider also from NZ riding Onwards & Upwards, an experienced CCI4* horse.
Both Mike ES & DOC have the benefit of showmanship, and an ability to get their points across in a fun and informative way, and David is one of the world’s greatest educators. He has distilled a system of how to teach a rider how to be an Eventer from the ground up. Mike let us into the way his head works in terms of putting a course together, what are appropriate questions and what aren’t.
Firstly David and Mike talked about their respective jobs and challenges. Both are gifted speakers and had very clear views on their respective roles. I figured their own words were most appropriate here.
From DOC:
‘This is kind of fun because the name of this session is Coach vs. Course Designer. Whilst we want to try and get into the head of the course designer today, sometimes it does feel like a Vs. You feel like really from a riding point of view, that when you go to a course, you have no idea realistically what Mike is going to ask, so your job in the training part is really to have all the pieces of the puzzle. We’ve all had those 5000 piece puzzles where you have 4098 pieces and right at the end you realize you don’t have 2 pieces! It’s a little frustrating. That’s what it feels like when I go to a course. Do I have all the pieces of the puzzle? Can I handle whatever someone is going to throw at me? Do I have the communication? Do I have my horses confident? Do I have a way to talk to them whatever the situation is? Because then I am coming to whatever event and I am going to go to Mike ES and go ‘Nope… Because I got them… I got the answers… I got stuff.’”
“So I always try to make sure that from a training point of view, I am putting in these pieces of the puzzle… I keep putting them together. The beginning of this puzzle for me is about two things: What are the horse’s responsibilities and what are my responsibilities?”
“The horse’s responsibilities are to jump whatever he needs to jump. That’s why we bought him. That’s why we feed him. He has to try for you.”
“Your responsibilities are for me very clear. No. 1 – Direction: Can you ride down a line, can I go faster or slower down that line, whether that line is bending or it is straight, but it is MY line. It is very important in everything that you do that the direction is the most important part of that first step.”
“If a horse’s quarters are out on a 20m circle in the dressage arena, why would it be different between a XC question of table to a huge corner? The horse’s quarters swing out, you have a run out at the corner, and all because you can’t ride a line. So all the phases have to tie together. You have to communicate in each phase in the same way on an every day basis.”
“No. 2 – Speed: How fast do you want to go? Again, on an everyday basis. If I gallop into a bounce at 700 miles an hour, I don’t care how balanced he is, how talented he is, it’s still going to be REALLY UGLY. It’s not going to work. I might live through it, but the speed has to be appropriate for whatever the exercise is that you are asking for and going cross country there are only four or five speeds that we play around with.”
“Then we get into the quality of the canter. There are people that say balance is the most important, but it doesn’t matter how good the balance is if you’re not pointed at the fence, so direction has to be number 1, then speed, then rhythm and balance…”
“And then the last is a sense of timing. Being able to recognize what’s going to happen, being able to recognize a distance, or not looking for a distance so that you can start to get the horse into a place where he has to do his job, to solve the puzzle. I’ve given you the line, I’ve given you the speed, I’ve given you the balance, a sense of rhythm, now solve the puzzle.“
“This is an instinctual game, you drive a car but you’re not thinking about driving the car, you’re on the phone, you’re talking to the kids in the back, you’re trying to get the dog in the back seat again, you’re eating, you’re constantly adjusting and that is purely by instinct. It doesn’t even get into the conscious part of your brain because you’re thinking about something else. But if you actually remember the first time you drove a car, you didn’t know what to look at. All that stuff, and there was too much information for you to process and you got really nervous about it. It is our job as coaches to try and set that up for a rider, to make it an instinctive process… To that end, if as a rider you’re thinking about it, you are LATE.”
For more from Gavin, click here:
On cross country position:
“We have a galloping position. How do I get from place A to B in the most economical position? We have a more upright balancing/ preparation position, and we have a jumping position where I get a bit closer to his centre of gravity. All of those positions are just positions that you can react in. You set up these positions so that you are always in a position that you can let your instinct kick in.”
“I am great believer in the galloping position and then the preparation position, in that preparation is a zone. You have to be done by the time you are five or six strides away from the fence. By then, I have the line, I have my speed, I already have the balance and I’m doing it out of instinct. Because from then on, it’s the horse just the horse reacting to what the fence is, and you’re supporting that. You’re keeping that line, that speed, that rhythm and balance. If you are still messing around at that point, what is the horse not paying attention to? The top of the fence, or the situation.”
“When things go wrong or right, a lot of riders can’t break it down, so they can’t repeat it. My aim is to break things down so they can analyze it. Was I on my line? No. Was I at an appropriate speed? Or was I out of balance because my horse after galloping for half a mile, when I went to go and prepare him, he didn’t change. That’s a training issue.”
“There are three questions I ask: Did you notice that something changed? Did you do something about it? Did you get an answer?“
Mike Etherington Smith:
“I think it is just worth reflecting for a few minutes on where the sport has gone in the last ten to fifteen years. Cross-country courses and course designers have had to change their way of thinking. There used to be these things called roads, tracks and steeplechase and therefore the endurance factor has changed. Also, in that time, the skill level of the top riders has developed to such a point that a few years ago you could build a course to maximum dimensions and it was probably good enough to get a result. Now, because of the way the sport has developed, we’ve had to become a lot more creative, so how do you get a result in a fair way? And our toolbox that we can use is actually pretty limited. First and foremost, it is the responsibility of the course designer to produce horses and give the riders of those horses a chance to benefit from the experience of going around and learn a bit more about each other, but at the same time they grow. It is also our responsibility to show horses and riders what they can do, and not show them what they can’t do.”
“If you think about it, riders can walk the course as many times as you want. Horses have to make a snap decision, they have to make a call in a fraction of a second as to whether they are going to jump it or not, so it has to be very clear, the question has to be very clear and it has to be totally, totally fair.”
“For me it’s very simple. You often see courses that pull horses here, pull horses there, but for me it’s very, very simple. Take all the science out of it out of course designing and keep it simple. This theory absolutely works. It’s very easy to overcomplicate things, I’ve been there. The most important thing is to watch what you’re seeing and learn from it. It’s understanding how horses work. How they travel across certain kinds of terrain. What do they do with the front end? What does the head and neck do? Take the rider out of the equation, be they good or bad. Horses will always work in pretty much the same way, so the mechanics of actually how they travel across the ground is very important.”
” We’re going to do what we can here, it’s clearly not a cross-country course, but we’ve set up some exercises which we’ll develop and work on. As I was saying we’ve had to get a lot more creative and really understand what horses are capable of. For example, a lot of young horses when they jump a ditch, they will travel one way or another. Very few horses jump a ditch straight. Same with oxers. You then introduce another dimension to that, such as jumping across a ditch (at an angle) and the rider doesn’t know which way the horse is going to go. Will he go this way, or will he go that way. That to me is an example of a perfectly fair question that won’t get a horse into trouble, but might cause problems for a rider who would say ‘you know, I didn’t quite get that right…’ As a course designer, what I always try to do is get a rider to think their way around a course.. There’s a relationship between all the fences, it’s like a jigsaw, every fence has a purpose and you have to understand the package. When you evaluate a course, it’s what you’re seeing around the whole course that is important, and it’s important to remember the mental stress that courses can put on horses. Every time a young horse goes up level it’s no different an Advanced horse going to Badminton for the first time. Add to that sometimes something that you do day in, day out at home becomes very different in competition because of the pressure. People over-ride very often. It’s very difficult for riders to just leave their horses alone and just let their horses do what they have been trained to do. As a course designer I want to test a rider’s ability to ride without punishing the horse. I want the horse to benefit from the experience, I want the rider to benefit from the experience, but there is a responsibility to educate.“
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Mike and David worked with our three guinea pig horses and riders. All three were at different stages of their career. Neil Spratt’s horse has just gone intermediate/ CCI*, Millie Dumas’ horse is about to go advanced, and Caroline Powell was on the horse that everybody wanted to take home this year, Onwards and Upwards. This horse took place in the IEF last year and his 2012 results and confidence spoke volumes for the themes of the session, educational course design and fantastic training and riding.
The arena was set up with various ‘mock’ cross-country problems. We had a mixture of cross country portables, several houses, a triple brush arrowhead, and then show jumps, a water-tray ‘ditch’ and several show jump corners. Problems were always tackled with the ‘Out’ element first. David passionately believes a horse should always be looking for the next or last question in a combination so David always allowed every horse to jump this element first, some with guide rails before the question was made more difficult. Both younger horses improved dramatically and the experienced horse reminded us and himself how talented and clever he is. David asked Caroline several times if he could take her horse home. The response on each occasion was a succinct. ‘NO’.
SOUNDBYTES:
“Don’t let it get away, don’t let it build!”
“NEXT!” David admitted this is his catchphrase in training. The rider should be looking up and out and at the last part of a combination as the horse is taking off for the first… Continuing this theme…
“Instinct happens out in front of you.” David was keen the rider’s focus stayed up and out in the future, not in the now (that would be late).
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The day finished with a final Q&A and wrap up from Eric. After 7 hours of concentrating, the Q&A provided some light relief in the form of a Team GB rider asking David O’Connor his views on stirrup length. She asked Mark Todd the same question. She plainly had her own views on stirrup length.The final comedy genius was another audience member asking David O’Connor his views on the Micklem multi-bridle that Caroline Powell’s horse was sporting (again, someone plainly with a view…)Just a hunch, but I’m guessing that said audience member probably hadn’t realized Mr William Micklem bred Mandiba and found both Custom Made and Biko. David’s timing and response were priceless, ‘Why don’t you ask William himself. He is sitting three to your left’. He was.
The forum is undoubtedly a brilliant way of sharpening your skills and reminding yourself of what you know before a season eventing. I will be booking my tickets for next year.
