David’s has returned to Ocala to coach the Florida high performance training sessions this week. The riders are more experienced than last week, but everyone will be returning to basics to build the foundation required to be a competitive part of David’s system moving forward. Once again, the great Max Corcoran is kind enough to send us reports from the training sessions. A million thanks Max and thank you for reading! Click here to read the report from Day 1.
Jon Holling and Downtown Harrison
From Max:
Day 2
Jon Holling is a busy man this week between riding in the training session, running a farm, and organizing the Ocala Horse Trials. He started out the day again – this time in the 20 x 60. David and Jon worked mostly on the quality of the canter – but not doing too much as Will (Downtown Harrison) runs today at Ocala.
Buck Davidson was next and did more dressage with David – Carl and Cassie Segal were on hand to watch Park Trader. They really enjoyed watching their horse and rider work with David. He also had The Apprentice – Buck and DOC carried on working where they left off the day before. No Buck today as he has a few (8) entries this weekend.
Michael Pollard, Hannah Burnett, and Sinead Halpin all had a jump – David worked with Dartfish, which is a record and review program on his iPad where he can stop a frame and critique. Riders found it quite helpful to break down each frame and see where they could improve their position.
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Hannah and William were no strangers to David’s jumping exercises and he was quite good. He did a bit of the same pattern as he started the 25 and Under crew – rail, jump, rail and the low wide oxer… Ms. Mars was able to be there to watch her homebred.
Michael and Hannie also started out doing the same exercise – they continued by working on some narrows to prepare for their run today at Ocala.
Tate and Sinead enjoyed the day of jumping with her mentor. Smiles and laughs from both as not many words have to be spoken between them – just David’s infamous hand signals…
Becky was first after the lunch – she chose to go back to the dressage ring – and was very impressive. Her winter homework has paid off! Becky returns back to her winter base in North Carolina on Tuesday.
Lainey Ashker came back with young Road Star and picked up where they left off the day before – the little horse has a great partnership with Lainey.
David finished the day riding Demeter for Marilyn Little – the chestnut mare has incredible lateral work and a great work ethic.
Teaching list today is quite short due to Ocala Horse Trails – but today High Performance gets to meet the new vet panel headed up by Mark Ravenaugh. Mark is from the Portland, Oregon area, but is no stranger to eventing or the USEF. The horses will all be looked at over the next 2 days. They want to be proactive looking after the horses; it is a baseline, not a “vet evaluation.”
I’m off to fence judge at Ocala – and see some of the riders in competition.
