PRO caught up with Ian Stark, a two-time Olympic silver medalist turned international course designer, to chat about his career and future aspirations in the all new Faces of Eventing video series. Ian has now designed courses through the three-star level, and while he’s still waiting for the elusive invitation to design his first four-star course, he’s delighted to be designing his first team championship course for the 2015 European Championships in Scotland.
“What I feel is I’m putting all my years of competition experience into designing and asking questions of the horses and riders. I want to get away from a lot of twisty-turn tracks and have people riding across the country, which is what is used to be. You rode from A to B. I don’t want to be thinking about arena questions. I want to develop people’s cross-country riding and keep the horse enthusiastic. At the end of the day, you want to have a good competition so you want to have lots of questions, but you want to have the horses and riders go away feeling like they’ve learned something, feeling like they’ve achieved something and they can go on to increase and better in their career. Now it’s my turn to give something back.”
Many thanks to PRO for producing this wonderful new video series. Be sure to follow the PRO blog.