It was decided to give Waca a taste of competition at the Central Coast Dressage Day at Il Cadore. A medium sized show that involved only a couple of hours travelling.
Still the change was dramatic enough for the young horse.
Poor little Waca was just a bit overwhelmed by his first BIG DAY OUT! Not that he was naughty, quite the contrary he was exceptionally well behaved, but by the time it came his turn in his first ever dressage competition, there wasn’t a lot of spark left, and he sort of fell on his forehand for a lot of the test. Still it was good enough for a 66% and a fourth place at his first outing.
Silva was quietly content:
“I was pretty pleased with him for a first time. He was very quiet, he got a bit tired. I think the trip knocked him round, all these new experiences. He was too low, lots of little things…”
“All he needs is more riding and more competition experience. When he gets fitter, then the trip won’t knock him around so much.”
“I’ll try to take him out to as many competitions as I can before the CDI. Hopefully about four or five. At the CDI we’ll get there the day earlier, and he’ll have a chance to get used to everything. I think he will be fine. He is so quiet, he didn’t spook, and his canter was really great – it feels like a rocking horse. He dropped too low and was too much on his forehand because he was too tired. The arena was uneven, he trod in a hole… but for a three-year-old he did well.”
For Silva all this fuss about Young Horse classes is something new, as the German stables she worked in were solidly focussed on FEI level competition.
“At Rudolf Zeilinger’s and Hubertus Schmidt’s the youngest horse was probably six years old and they were doing Prix St Georges. I rode lots of young horses in the first three years when I did my Bereiter’s licence, but at those competition stables they take the horses out for their first competition at Prix St Georges.”
“It was a bit of a shock when I got to Australia, not just the concentration on young horses classes – but the classes themselves are different to what we have in Germany.”
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Do you think it would be nicer for the three and four year old young horses to have it like it is at the Bundeschampionate, where they do work in groups, and just breeze along showing their natural paces?
“For me, I would like that better, working in a 100 by 60 metre ring, just go forward in walk, trot and canter – so they are not tied into a ten metre circle. When they are so young they are not very balanced, and you can’t really judge the paces if they have to do such tight movements.”
So what was it like riding the test at Il Cadore?
“He felt like he stopped breathing, he was nervous, then the arena was small – the arena we work on at home is bigger than a normal arena. If he had been in a Young Horse class in Germany, he would have just gone forward with no tight turns and he probably would have marked better.”
Was it hard to keep him concentrating?
“Not really, I think the other horses I rode were more excited than he was. He did try to concentrate, but it was a two-hour trip to get there, and he had never done that before. All the excitement, plaiting up, getting on the truck, that made him really tired.”
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So where to now? You want to get him to Dressage with the Stars – what is the program?
“I don’t think there is much to fix up, it is just an experience thing. At the next competition he will be more relaxed because he knows what is going on. He had a good experience here at Il Cadore, nothing bad happened to him, for the horse it was perfect, he just sauntered around, went back to the float and had some hay. When he goes to the next competition, he will know that there is nothing bad coming. I don’t think I have to fix anything – it is just more experience, more strength… more riding.”
A few months later, Waca headed off to the CDI at Sydney for the Young Horse Classes there, and this time the experience of having already been out seemed to pay off. According to Silva:
“He was heaps more confident – it felt like he knew what was going on. And the trip to Horsley Park didn’t knock him around much either.
And what about all the other horses in the warm-up ring?
“It was pretty amazing when we went into this big arena with all these other horses, and he didn’t even look at them, he just worked and concentrated. It’s quite amazing for such a young horse.”
He’s still feeling good for Dressage with the Stars?
“He is actually, he is looking like a different horse. He has muscled up and he is beautiful at the moment.”
At Dressage with the Stars at the end of the year…
Little Waca was quite a star at Dressage with the Stars finishing sixth in the four-year-old final. Afterwards Silva was happy…
“I was thrilled with him. He went the best he has ever gone. He was really good in the first test but then the second test was even better. I liked it more than the judges, I really thought he was great. I loved his trot work. In the first test I might not have ridden the walk very well but in the second test, walk, trot and canter were all fine. He was super with the atmosphere. He didn’t look at anything, and that is a big ask in the big arena, with all the flowers and noise, he just went in and did his best test ever.”
So what is the future for Waca now?
“I think we might sell him because he is too small for me. I think he will be a wonderful horse for someone a bit smaller than me, he has got such a good temperament that he would be perfect for a young rider, and with the scope to go all the way. I’ve enjoyed working with him, he is such an honest horse, everything with him has been nice and straightforward, just like it says it should be in the books…”
Not worried by the atmosphere at SIEC and into the top ten at DWTS…!
IN PART TWO WE LEARNT THAT SILVA HAD TRAINED WITH TWO OF GERMANY’S MOST RESPECTED DRESSAGE MASTERS – HUBERTUS SCHMIDT AND RUDOLF ZEILINGER – WHICH LEAVES THE NEXT QUESTION FAIRLY OBVIOUS…
So what made you crazy enough to want to come and live in Australia?
“That is a good question! I was working for three years with Rudolf, and it is the greatest thing to do, but still you get young horses and you take them to Inter I and he takes over – fair enough, he’s the man, but you actually don’t get to compete Grand Prix. So I was wondering what to do, I didn’t want to leave him because he was really good to me. Then someone asked me to come to Australia to train their horses, and I thought, no way – this is like the other side of the world; I am not going to Australia. My mum actually said to me, look, for your job you need to learn to speak English; you need to be able to teach people in English. So I thought, I might go to Australia for six months to learn English.”
“I went to Rudolf, and I was very nervous to tell him. I said ‘look I want to learn English and I’ve got an opportunity to go to Australia’ and I was very surprised, he said, ‘that is great, I love Australia.’ He said it is a beautiful country, do that, and whenever you want to come back, you are welcome and you’ve got a job.”
“I thought that is perfect, I’ll go to Australia for six months, have a little time out of all the stress and everything, and go back to Germany. Then I ended up meeting my fiance, Boyd Martin!”
“I really enjoy training the horses here. There are very talented horses, but they probably need different training. I see horses that are as amazing as the horses in Germany; it is just in Germany there are more of them. I like working with young riders here, they have a good feel, they just need to work a little differently.”
In what ways different?
“With the young riders in Germany, it is very disciplined, which is probably good in one way but bad in the other, because many young riders quit after a while because they are under so much pressure. The young riders here just have fun, galloping around the paddocks! I think they need to be more disciplined, not as much as in Germany, but they need to work on their position – which I do with my students. I let them ride without stirrups – they are very surprised when they do it at first, whinging, but they get through it. I put them on the lunge and take their reins away…”
Even Boyd on the lunge?
“Even Boyd, Boyd has improved his riding since we started that. He actually wins all the dressage tests at the events now.”
Silva and Boyd Martin now live in the USA
What are your ambitions riding in Australia now?
“I’ve got a six-year-old Salute, Theopolis Thisla, and I think that horse is one of the best I’ve ridden. I think he will be competitive. He is only six and I took him out in Prix St Georges and he won twice. He is doing piaffe and passage, and one times changes – only baby stuff, I just play around with it, but he is very intelligent and very talented. I’m hoping that he will be Grand Prix by this time next year. I would like to take him wherever I can go…”
You went back to Rudolf at Christmas to check you hadn’t ruined your riding in Australia?
“Because Rudolf said I could come back whenever I liked, I just gave him a ring. I was here for a year, and I was worried riding all the time by myself, I thought it would be good to go back and see if he can fix me up. He said no worries come over. So I went over for two and a half months. The first day I got on the first horse, I was so nervous, I thought, oh my god when I trot on now, he will just scream at me. I trotted on and everything was fine, he didn’t say anything, which worried me a bit. Then he started teaching me and he said ‘look everything is fine. You just need to remind yourself a couple of things about your position’, and just the little things he fixed up. I didn’t lose that much.”
Is that the way it should go, Boyd and Nick Fyffe came back from Martina Hannover’s riding much better, and Kevin McNab from Wolfram Wittig, Ryan Wood from Norbert Van Laak, Brett Parbery from Holga Finken… that our riders should try to regularly make the trip to Germany?
“If anyone has the opportunity to do this, they should take it. I want to go back every single year for two months, at least, even one month. For me it is easier, because they know me at Rudolf’s stables – it is harder when you go over there and they don’t know you, they don’t just give you five Grand Prix horses to ride, you have to work hard first and show them that you want to learn, then they help you. But if you have the opportunity – go there, even just to watch these riders ride, it helps. You just think, ‘oh my god, I want to ride like that’. You pick up so much just watching. At Rudolf’s I just sit in the corner, and think, ‘god I will never ride like that, I wish I could.’ And then it is nice to come back to Australia.”
Breed your own dressage star, find a stallion for your mare at International Horse Breeders: www.ihb.com.au
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