Mary King on Training, Breeding & Riding

Saturday afternoon’s session was primarily about Mary’s training, fitness and breeding programme, and the longer she spoke, the more she surprised most people in the room with just how old-fashioned and down-to-earth she still is, “I like to keep things as natural as possible”. Many times she would stress keeping the horse happy, whether as an aid to keeping weight on, or to improve performance, but just because in general it’s all supposed to be fun too.

It was quite nice too to see a slightly tougher side emerge. Of course we all know it’s there; you don’t garner six top ten CCI**** placings in a year purely by being nice, there’s a steely competitive drive there, and it showed a few times. Mary described to us how she raises her babies – very patiently and methodically, “Be strict with yourself about the way you do everything with them from the very beginning”. They stay out in the field until their 3 year old year, and then she uses the few months down time in the off season to break them to tack and back them herself. Once the event horses come back into work in January, they get turned back out until the following year. Mary likes to lead the youngsters off an older horse a lot to get them used to traffic and see things, rather than long reining, and her horses often don’t start jumping until their 5 year old year.(“Not to blow my own trumpet but I do believe that the more you press them as young horses, the less long they’ll last as older horses”. Case in point: King William did FIFTEEN long format CCI****’s and never went lame). She likes to use a neck strap early on with all her youngsters, and then side reins with elastic bungies to encourage a rounder outline. Even at the very basic level, straightness is important, a round outline, even long and low, going forward to the contact and accepting the rein, proper bend through the corners. 

Mary on Kings Temptress at Burghley CCI**** 2011

Many people were surprised to learn that Mary only owns 3 acres, and relies on the kindness of farmers whose fields she borrows for schooling. She doesn’t have an arena, or school in one; as so many events in England take place on grass, she feels it stands her in good stead to train in open spaces and not for her horses to get used to being on an artificial surface. That being said, she told us she would never dream of jumping her horses on grass without studs in; at any level they all wear studs, even if it’s just the babies wearing one on the outside of each shoe. Once they’ve upgraded to intermediate, they’re deemed worthy of two studs in each shoe, and a breastplate, but loosely attached! Tight breastplates – another bugbear of Mary’s; the saddle should fit correctly. 

Spookiness in a horse she told us, is often in their nature, and is often not something you can train out of them, but something you have to put up with and adapt to, but most certainly NOT something that should be used as an excuse. “If a horse ducks out cross country I would really be quite cross! Stop them. Be quite strong. Turn back to the fence. Smack them! ALWAYS carry a jumping whip cross country” There’s that grit! 

Another thing that Mary repeated over and over again was confidence: the horse’s confidence is of the utmost importance, and you want to do everything you can to avoid shaking that, no matter what the situation. 

Mary told us she learned most of her cross country riding by copying – from watching videos of Lucinda (Prior-Palmer, now Green) Ginny (Holgate/Leng, now Eliot), and Mark Todd and trying to ride like them. She told us how Pat Manning had drilled into her the importance of maintaining a still lower leg position no matter what.  Mary wants us to be soft in the rein, allowing the horse the freedom to use his head and neck  over the jump, to sit quietly and softly cross-country, and stay out of the horse’s way, and yet be ready to be effective when needed and cited William Fox-Pitt and Mark Todd as perfect examples. 

“Of course, there’s exceptions to every rule, and Andrew Nicholson is that – he basically just rides cross country standing up in his stirrups with his hands down, longish stirrups, he’s unique, you’d never teach anyone to ride like him, but he rarely falls off!” 

Mary has developed a jumping saddle with Barnsby, close contact, forward cut and without a lot of knee roll,and uses it for both cross-country and show-jumping phases. To much amazement she shared that she jacks her stirrups up NINE holes for cross country from her dressage length.  At Rolex last spring, she only had one jumping saddle for both horses, and seven horses between her two rides; she jumped four fences on Kings Temptress, none big, and when the warm up steward, present at the AGM remarked on it, Mary explained that at a 3 Day Event she would never jump more than six fences, that William Fox-Pitt and many others are similar, and that especially with Tess (Kings Temptress) who is not the best jumper but tries so hard, she feels it’s far more important for her to go into the ring having cleared a few practice jumps, albeit small, rather than having made an effort over some big fences, knocked them down and become demoralised – the confidence factor again. 

Moving onto feeding and stable management and this is where Mary really raised some eyebrows – no physio, no chiropractic, no joint injections. Her horses go out every day, the young ones live out, the five year olds event from the field. She feeds a coarse mix (sweet feed) in the morning, and a mix of pellets and chaff at lunch and dinner, but in small amounts. She starts all her horses in rubber bits, then eggbutt snaffles, but if they get strong cross country would prefer a stronger bit to fighting to keep control.  The young horses go down to the river to play and splash, go the woods to clamber up and down banks, using natural features as much as possible.  The event horses do all their galloping in a sloping grass field nearby unless the ground becomes very firm.

Despite the fact that the first three horses she bred –  Kings Fancy, Kings Gem and Kings Temptress, all mares, have  gone on to compete at four star level, and the third, Kings Temptress won Rolex CCI**** last year, Mary still insists she’s “not very knowledgeable” about breeding.  Mary credits part of her success in her good fortune in being able to produce them herself, and said she also chose fashionable sires in the hope that she would be able to sell the offspring on easily if need be. Kings Gem and Kings Fancy, both by Rock King, have both since been sold as successful Young Rider horses, while Mary competes Kings Temptress for owner Derek Baden. As the highest placed British bred mare at Burghley three times Tess has won the British Breeding Award for Mary and two free embryo transfers each time, and “she’s been popping the embryos out, dear Tess, she’s got so good at it, she’s got it down to a fine art!” Tess now has 3 year olds,2 year olds and a yearling by embryo transfer,  as well as an 8 year old gelding that she had naturally and that Mary’s daughter Emily competes at intermediate level. Mary says she still picks fashionable sires, most recently Nick Gauntlett’s CCI**** eventer Chili Morning and Grafenstolz.

Chili Morning and Nick Gauntlett at Burghley CCI**** 2011

Modest, patient and always ready with a quick laugh, or spontaneous remark, Mary has charmed Area 8 this weekend, and according to the treasurer at the saturday night dinner, singlehandedly turned 2012 into a profit already, but don’t quote me on that because I have a terrible reputation as far as maths is concerned, and it had been a very long day of absorbing information!  Massive thank you’s to Mary King of course – apparently tireless, definitely peerless. Thank you to Area 8, especially Cathy Weischoff for supreme organisation, and thank you for reading. Still more to come from poor Mary King tomorrow! Go and Rest, Mary, and Go Eventing!