Story – Chris Hector
Photos – Roz Neave

When heard that Matthew Ryan was on his way to Adelaide to compete in the CIC we thought it would be a neat idea to match him up with a promising young rider – Matt could mentor the rider through Adelaide 3DE and then in the following week we could have a de-brief and a lesson for the rider. Natalie Davies was the perfect candidate for the rider’s role. Twenty three year old Nat has come off a sensational eventing season, winning the Victorian Event Rider of the Year Rider title with good performances. At Tooradin, she won two classes, and came third in the OI with Rex, at Heytesbury, 2nd with Rex, fifth in the Victorian Champs, again with Rex. 3rd in the Wandin CIC and first at Yeringberg with her other horse, Chatswood Sharp Move.
Nat also has the reputation of being an extremely bright and receptive pupil.
Natalie used to be a show rider until she saw the light:
“When I was 16, I got sick of losing because of someone’s opinion. I wasn’t that good at showing anyway, so I started eventing my show hack! I took two years off to go to uni, then I bought Rex (AEA Abel Rex – he’s by the late Edwardo Rex out of Abel Rose, a daughter of Abel Tasman, the Advanced mare Mike Baker used to event) from the Dressage with the Stars Auction in 2001. He’s been a big surprise. When he was pre novice I didn’t think he’d get past pre novice, when he was novice I didn’t think he’d get past novice, and now that he is intermediate he looks as if he is going to go three star! Last year he won the Victorian Intermediate Horse of the Year title.”
And of course, Matt, like his brother Heath, is an exceptional instructor, not just technically correct but also inspiring in his approach to the sport he loves. And he loves teaching - if he gets the right pupil:

“I thrive on teaching when I feel the pupil is responding and trying really hard. Sometimes it doesn’t matter whether they get it or not, it is whether they made a big enough effort. That’s tough to say that because quite often what I ask them to do is quite different to what they have been taught before, and what they feel comfortable with.”
“When I am being myself, I try to be the best pupil I can be, even though I might be struggling to grasp the theory that goes with that particular philosophy, I’ll throw my heart into it, and hopefully I might go away with some good training ideas. I might not take those concepts fully into my program but I will filter in the bits that will suit my way of training. So that’s where I get my kicks as a trainer, I love pupils to be good pupils – I love them to throw their heart into it, no matter how complicated it is, or how confused they may be. Throw their heart into it – because quite often it is not until you actually feel something, that you understand it.”
“With my training, I guess I am a bit fierce. When I’m teaching I don’t just sit on the fence line and make a few comments, I do actually get very involved and committed to a lesson. Because of that I guess I am thought of as fierce but I’d hate to think it was thought I am as fierce as Heath! I do probably put a certain amount of pressure on the pupils, and some wear it, and some can’t handle it. The pupils who thrive in those conditions, keep coming back, particularly if they find they are achieving something.”
Scratch a Ryan and you find a philosopher:
“I like to use analogies in my teaching. I will compare what we are doing with things we are more familiar with – like the running of a car, or the flying of a kite, little things like that. And the analogies can sometimes hit home better for the pupils. One day I would like to write a book about all the analogies I use to help pupils understand horse riding.”
Matt polished his skills as a rider as the Lochinvar Equestrian Centre, run by his brother Heath, and his wife, Rozzie. The Centre was a high-octane mix of ferocious talent. An environment that produced then, and continues to produce, some of Australia’s most exciting eventing riders. Matt feels that environment is necessary if you are aiming for the very top:

“If you just want to enjoy eventing, then that sort of experience is not important, it depends where you set your aims. If you want to go to the top, you need an environment like that. In actual fact, I never wanted to ride horses full time. When Heath was running the NSW Centre, he badgered me for a couple of years to come and work for him, and I didn’t. I preferred to work on the farm and keep horses as just a bit of a hobby, but as the Seoul Olympics were drawing nearer and nearer, because that was one of the aims I had set myself, I came to the decision that to have the best shot, I needed to approach horse riding more professionally.”
“Moving into that environment, it was not just the intensive training but intensive comparison with other riders at the Centre. It means that when you are riding in the Indoor with the others, just for your self-esteem you ride as well as you can. You try not to allow another rider to do better work than you. There’s no doubt about it that it was a pressure cooker situation at times, but if you can handle it, you learn a lot out of it. It’s not just comparing yourself with the other riders, but watching how they go about doing things – you can pick up on so many things without anyone actually saying anything, just by observing.”
What was it like being roped in at the last minute, and here’s Nat, she’s quite a successful rider, but we want to see how you can help her…
“That wasn’t difficult. My only concern with helping someone at that later stage is that I didn’t want to get too involved, because if I was very different to what she had been doing before – be it the flatwork, or jumping - it would actually disrupt her too much rather than do good. Quite often when you have a new instructor, they might unravel some of the things you’ve done – go back to basics is the common term – and re-build on a different type of philosophy… so sometimes to take a forward step you have to take a backwards step and the last thing I wanted to do was put Nat in the situation where she took a backwards step.”
“I tried to be very careful with how much advice I gave her on the day. I said I’d watch her, and the day before the dressage, the more I helped her, the more she enjoyed it, so I actually helped her and gave her more advice than I thought I’d be doing. But she had already talked to me about some of her weaknesses, so we could focus on things she was already thinking about.”
“Before she did her dressage test, I watched her in the distance because my fiancée Maree Sleet was also warming up for her test, but after Maree finished, I came over to Nat and said, these are the things I’ve seen at a distance. The main thing was, when she went into the lateral work, she slowed everything down, so I encouraged her to stay much more forward, probably to the point where she feels that she is increasing the rhythm, going faster into the lateral work - not that she really is, but it might feel that way.”
“One of the things we learn as competitors these days is it that it is not always how round your horse is, or how correctly your horse is going, but rhythm, rhythm, rhythm. Every judge we talk to in the critiques after we do a 3DE, talks about rhythm – and unfortunately sometimes they don’t even know if a horse is on the bit! We have to play to what the judges are looking for.”
On the cross-country Matt was a reassuring presence for Nat and again he was careful not to overload her with a new approach:
“When we walked the cross country, I basically explained how my mind was thinking as I looked at each fence. What the problems, as I saw them, were. When I walk a cross country, I look initially at how I want to jump a fence, then I analyse what can go wrong, what are the dangers with this fence. It’s like being a good doctor, the more learned you are, the quicker you are to recognize the symptoms of the patient, and you can give the correct treatment. As you are coming into a cross country fence, at the slightest hint of those symptoms developing, you recognize the symptoms and you can correct the situation quickly.”
“The obvious thing is a run off at an apex. As you are coming into the apex, you’ll be hanging off the rein to stop the horse even thinking about running off there. Be a good doctor, don’t be naïve thinking that fences have no problems, appreciate each problem, be ready to react to them if they start to raise their ugly head. On top of that, try to give the right vaccination before you even get there – so you don’t pick up Malaria when you go to the tropics, you’ve already had your shots. When you come to that left corner, you are already hanging off the right rein before the horse even thinks of running off.”
Matt, Maree and Nat spent lots and lots of time at Fence 17:
“There was one particularly tricky line at the coffin combination. I think at the end of the day the course designer recognized that he’d had the builders put the final element in not a good spot - to the point where he thought it might even be dangerous – so he put these couple of little trees in the way, to stop us going the direct line to try and make the distance bigger. It did actually break up the fence quite horribly, and we were trying to work out a strategy to cope. Go round the tree this way, no that way, hug the trees, trot over the ditch… the main problem was trying to make the distance from the ditch to the arrowhead work. It was a really short two.”
“We came up with the idea, that you jump the first element, heading away in the direction of the gum tree – Nat was really good, when she was working out her angles she was always looking for a tree or a telegraph pole to line up on. We worked out a plan, where we could slow it all down, to the point where we might even trot over this little ditch, and turn as we jumped the ditch and hopefully the two strides would come up.”
“We must have been at that fence for a good 20 minutes going over the options and I think we all walked away quite satisfied – yep we think we can make this line happen. I think Nat had probably thought something like that on her first walk anyway, so when we all came to a similar decision, she was really pleased because that was the line she planned to take anyway.”

And that was Natalie’s reaction as well:
“It was fantastic to have Mathew Ryan help me. He improved my dressage by at least 5% - he just got that little bit extra into me, with my canter, got me into a better position – just those little things that your own instructor might sometimes overlook. He was so generous with his time; he always took time out to help me. I thought he would be much too busy, but he always found the time.”
“The way he walked the cross country with me, made me so confident that my lines were right. They were lines I’d decided to take, but to have an Olympic gold medallist say, yeah, you are on the right track was something else. To be able to ride the cross country knowing my lines were how they ought to be, it gave me the confidence to ride clear and under time.”
“When we first met, Matt was very reserved. He didn’t know me or my horse, but as we started walking around and I told him about my horse and what I had done, and I was getting on well with Maree, then he opened up and started to really give me a hand. He kept saying ‘I don’t want to tell you what to do…’ but then he opened up, and he was really good about it.”
“In the dressage he said that my canter needs to be a lot better, and that showed in the showjumping. My canter just isn’t good enough, that was ultimately what let me down in my showjumping. The canter was too flat and too slow, and that is exactly what Matt said about the dressage.”
“He mainly gave me the confidence that I was on the right path. I’ve always been good at cross country and it has more been the showjumping that let me down, and that’s what happened here.”
“As I was coming down the laneway to go into the showjumping arena, the lady said to me, we’re swabbing the two first horses, so can you hang around afterwards, and I think that is when it hit me, that I was coming second at such a big event. When we came in, Rex is such a spooky horse, he looked around and lost the plot, so did I – my canter just died as the round went on, and that told the story. I had too many down.”
And that was the story of Natalie’s Adelaide. Tenth after the dressage sitting on a 54.6, then the third fastest cross country of the day, to add only 0.8 time and rocket up into second place going into the final phase. Then four rotten rails in the showjumping to finish in eighth.
But the story of Nat and Matt is just beginning. Next month, we sit in on the de-brief…