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. Many thanks to Gavin for coming on board and presenting this wonderful write-up of the 2013 International Eventing Forum.
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Gavin Makinson and Oliver Cromwell
SESSION 2: The Steps Through the Levels — Sir Mark Todd
SIR Mark Todd obviously requires no introduction. Mark worked with three horses and riders at different levels: Kitty King, a CCI4* rider, and Ceylor LAN, a 6-year-old working at BE100; David Doel, a UK team Young Rider, and Koyuna Sun Magic, a 17-year-old former CCI4* horse with Wendy Schaeffer and David’s GB Young Rider team horse; and Louise Harwood (nee Skelton), a CCI3* rider for GB, and Whitson, a 10-year-old CCI3* horse.
Mark was introduced by Eric Smiley as having something in common with Roger Federer and Rory McIlroy, in that all of those three make their respective sports look easy. It’s hard to disagree with that.
The focus of Mark’s session was the “jumping ladder.” He wanted to give us a very brief glimpse into some of the things you can do to train and also improve a horse. Mark was very aware he wouldn’t be able to show us the full journey through to international event horse, but what it did give us was a real insight into some of the reasons Mark has done so well and what his day-to-day work involves. And as a trainer, his teaching style mirrored his riding … quiet, very focused, clear and stylish.
Mark talked about the two main areas he works on when training his horses to jump. First, he talked about using gymnastic exercises to improve the horse’s balance, technique and strength. Then, the other side of his jumping and pole work focused solely on improving the horse’s rideability.
Mark stressed the importance of carrying the flatwork from the dressage forwards into the jumping. Mark described this work as “flatwork with jumps in the way. With a horse that’s rideable in the arena that you can control at the canter, you can have him balanced and be certain that you can ride in a balanced, positive way to a fence. When you ask the horse to slow down, check the stride and that he does it immediately, and when you put your leg on to lengthen the stride, that he does that immediately. And that all comes back to your training on the flat that you carry through to your jumping.”
Improving Rideability
To assess and then improve the rideability, the guinea pig riders started in trot, using various poles dotted around the school. Mark said that even with his older horses, he often goes back to a pole on the floor, reinforcing rhythm, balance, control and obedience. And the daily work of all his horses incorporates random poles into the work in an effort to make jumping “everyday and no big deal.”
From random poles scattered on the floor in trot, the work progressed to canter and to canter poles at related distances. Throughout the work, Mark was quietly insistent on rideability, adjustability and the rider remaining soft. He didn’t mind mistakes but has an uncanny ability in knowing when to correct, or simply repeat. Mark was keen as well that a progression be shown in the riders. For example, it was fine for a rider to use a more visible hand aid the first time through a new exercise where a horse had to shorten. In subsequent attempts, though, the horse had to respond to the rider’s upper body so the hand could become less dominant and the aids more refined.
Pole work and related distances were repeated until the horse truly understood the question and then was able to repeat it correctly subsequent times. From a personal point of view, it was a good reminder that the first time a horse gets it right isn’t the time to pat him on the neck and put him away, but to check it wasn’t a fluke once or twice more, then move on (and then probably check it a couple of days later).
Work over a pole progressed to a small fence — nothing complicated — but with the same emphasis on rhythm, balance and softness, and then to an exercise to teach the horse to land on the correct lead. It was surprising that all horses bar one misread this exercise at first, but the exercise was essentially a figure of 10- to 15-meter circles, with a small fence over X. Each time the horse landed, it would land on the opposite leg from which it had taken off in, and then the circle was reduced. The canter wasn’t allowed to change — the horse had to remain balanced — and Mark was insistent on rideability. It took several attempts until Mark was happy.
From a spectator’s point of view, it was fascinating to realize that, yes, Mark undoubtedly has a gift, but the process in making it all look so easy comes from many dedicated hours of quiet, obsessive persistence at home. Toddy was lightning quick to spot if an aid could be smaller, if a rider’s balance could be better, or if we could interfere less or do something better. Applying those same questions to his own riding gives us the finished product that we are so used to seeing on the big day.
Click for much more from Gavin:
Gymnastic Exercises
After several walk breaks, Mark moved on to gymnastic exercises. One involved three small parallels in a grid, spaced 7 yards apart, with a take off and landing pole for each fence, but no ground lines. The fences started off very low with all three parts of the grid in, before the distances were shortened by moving the parallels wider; subsequently, the fences were raised to about 1.15 meters. Mark said he dispensed with ground lines in this exercise, outlining the need for a horse to focus on the top rail and nothing but the top rail.
All of the horses had a look, and Mark pointed out it was quite a question, even at the low height, for Kitty King’s 6-year-old horse’s level of training. This horse was lovely to watch. Initially green, as his confidence grew, his jump got bigger; Kitty could relax and he showed off his true potential. David Doel looked stylish throughout and was riding a very experienced horse, but Mark adjusted David’s balance slightly in the air, which gave him more potential for adjustability within sequences of fences. Remember this young man’s name. Louise Harwood demonstrated to us once again there is more than one way of doing things. In the early exercises, her horse Whitson offered a fairly unique viewpoint on life, but as the difficulty progressed, he showed his experience and once again that there is no one way to do things, so long as it works. And Louise’s consistent results at CCI3* and CCI4* back this up.
Mark then moved on to sequences of fences before finally a course. Emphasis was given on rideability, adjustability and walking a plan, then having the tools to make it happen and repeating the exercise until you could make it happen.
Soundbites from Toddy
“Be soft … Rhythm, rhythm, rhythm.” — a Toddy hallmark.
“Don’t lean … turn the body and open the rein outwards, not backwards.” When changing legs in the air, Mark wanted the rider’s body to stay dead centre — just position the horse’s shoulder and the rider to open the rein.
“It’s the horse’s job to sort the pole out; the rider just does the balance and the rhythm.”
“Use your hand aids initially, then replace them with the upper body.”
“We used to bury our horses at verticals in training trying to encourage them to be careful, but modern thinking is to help the horse so he doesn’t learn to hit fences. So at home now I keep them off uprights and give them a decent ground line.”
On related distances: “If you have a long five, you’d want to push for the first two or three or come in big enough that you can balance for the last two. Otherwise, the horse would be on its shoulders.”
On stirrup length: “A rider’s body shape will determine the exact length they ride at, but I’m more interested in the training, to be honest, than a small difference in style.”
FEI Rules Update
After lunch, we had an update from the FEI on the new rules. The forum is now an important and rare opportunity for much of British Eventing, the FEI and all those involved in the running of the sport to get together. Unfortunately, this Q&A session was undoubtedly hampered by the respective languages of our speakers. That said, as the profile of our sport rises in the media and its popularity throughout the world increases, we were reminded that it is important to standardize the sport worldwide and maintain positive press. Our recent rulebook changes have led to a lot of suspicion and panic as people work out how they are “categorised” and trying to work out exactly what we are qualified for this season, but we should remember that rules are there to keep us safe and that safe sport doesn’t have to dull sport —dangerous sport and accidents are bad television.
