Story – Chris Hector Photos – Roz Neave, Libby Law and Peter Orr
For Tim Boland, 2012 was a bit of a roller coaster ride. Great performances at Sydney and Melbourne with Billy Elliot saw him almost become a member of the Australian Eventing team at the London Games only to miss out at the last moment, but Tim is determined to focus on the good things that happened…
“2012 was pretty exciting. Lots of good, and I just feed on the positives. I had a good year – Sydney and Melbourne – went away with the team. Wasn’t required to compete at London. Stayed on and did Blenheim, Billy Elliot went great. He was on absolute empty after having four 3DE preparations within five months. It was credit to him that he finished where he did. He’s come back to Australia, and onwards and upwards for the World Championships next year.”
And in the run up to Sydney, he was sick at Albury, which meant the pair missed being part of the Aussie Trans Tasman team…
“He just really felt flat all weekend at Albury, which is very unusual because he is a slightly hot, bouncy thing. It was really odd. I even said to Nathan, the team vet at the final trot up, we should take a blood test. He said there’s no point, he’s just run cross country, but I was eager to get him tested when I got home. He wasn’t eating, he was just standing in his stall. He had a virus, he’s on the up again now but it would have been pointless to bring him to Sydney with no work. Now I am going to give him a good break before we head to Adelaide.”
Above: Billy Elliott and Tim at Blenheim in the UK, Below: Tim and Billy on home turf
And for the big year – 2013 – the lead-up to the Worlds?
“I think we are going to feel more in the loop next year, and we have to make a very definite plan. Everyone has been told they have to do a three day event. Personally I would like to go overseas and do Badminton or Lumühlen after Adelaide. The horse has been a very successful three star horse, obviously he couldn’t do any more at three star, he was getting mid 30s dressage, clear jumping, clear cross country, he was very competitive. If they are going to criticise him, it would have to be that he lacks four star experience, and I am quite ready to get that.”
There is always a feeling that he is a little slow cross country…
“Yes, in the past, that is fair enough. I take that on the chin. He is such an exuberant jumper we’ve wasted time cross country, but I think he’s just getting better and better. And to those people who say he’s slow cross country, I say, he still finished in front of most of them, based on his dressage and showjumping. I don’t go criticising people’s dressage or showjumping, but I am an easy target because I might have a few time penalties. I’m aware of it, I’m not ignoring it. We all need to improve and it is something I need to improve.”
A lot of your work is with Thoroughbred racehorses – do you find there is a lot of flow over, the knowledge involved in getting racehorses fit to dealing with your eventers?
“Certainly for fitness I am able to get a really good base level of fitness. We’ve got an 1100 metre track, and a water walker. We’ve got the top level trainers in Sydney and Melbourne trusting us with their Group 1 horses – we know we are doing things right, and there’s certainly a cross-over. From those racing connections, people like Chris Waller in Sydney, Peter Moody in Melbourne, John Sellers in Hong Kong, they are three of my biggest supporters, I learn a lot about business and management in general. They are guys you can’t help but learn from.”
“My major business is pre-training and breaking-in. I’ve got 182 racehorses,
as of today, we do a stock take every 24 hours, spread over three farms: breaking in, spelling, pre-training. That’s why I appear busy when I come to an event because I don’t actually go to many events, I’ll pick where I run the horses and often run six to eight of them at an event, but you won’t see me at too many events.”
Looking at the 182 horses you have at the moment, how many of them would make good eventing horses?
“Quite a few. Interesting thing is that most of the horses I have for eventing now, are purpose-bred sport horses but I can say that the most exciting horse on our farm is a five-year-old by Quest for Fame, he was trained by Chris Waller and owned by the Ingham family, a horse called Nevada Ned – he is exceptional. He has won his past two prelim starts. It is easy to say at that low level, that they are exceptional but I’ve had a lot of good horses, and he really feels like the business. He jumps for fun, really techniquey, great mover – I’m very excited about him.”
New star? Nevada Ned
All things being equal, would you prefer to be sitting on a Thoroughbred or a Sport Horse?
“Thoroughbred, when you get to the nine-minute marker on cross country, there is still something in the tank, but Warmbloods, I’ve carried a lot of tired Warmbloods for those last couple of minutes cross country, and it is often ugly.”
You’ve been around for a while – are you still learning? Who helps you?
“On the flat Brett Parbery has been fantastic, Brett Parbery and Roger Fitzhardinge are the two people who help me on the flat. I’ve been seeing Rod Brown for 25 years, and I see him as often as I can. He lives ten minutes from me, and I am around there constantly.
He is a great help…”
And a real horseman…
“Fantastic, he’s interested in what we are doing on the flat, he is interested in cross country. Just the other day, he said, I was watching you ride cross country and I had a couple of ideas… You get to a certain age, and you don’t usually have a mentor as such, you have someone who helps you on the flat, and someone who helps you jumping, it’s nice to have someone who feels a bit responsible. I feel I’ve got a good team.”
You’ve been competing for a while now, has that enthusiasm ever waned?
“Definitely. When you go to a shitty event in the country, and you go like a busted arse, it wanes big time. On the way home you think, what the hell am I doing? Especially after you’ve spent some time overseas. It is such an easy thing to say, that overseas is better, in lots of ways it is good, and it is very easy to get in your truck and go to say, Belton One Day event, and it is beautiful, with the stately home in the background, great track, great ground. The answer is yes, my enthusiasm does wane, I’d be lying if I said anything else, but how I overcome that is that I go to less events, and my life is full of things other than eventing. I used to do a lot of teaching, I don’t teach at all now, just one or two people, I can think of nothing worse than trotting round in circles all day and jumping jumps. Racing is my core business, and eventing I do for fun, and really try to keep it that way.”
“I’m into sport. I play a lot of golf, tennis. I just don’t want to be pigeon holed as a grumpy bow-legged old man who rides horses. Life is for living. I love what I do, but I work hard on making sure I love what I do.”
Between now and Normandy, what will be the issues you work on with Billy Elliot?
“I am happy that he is really competitive on the flat, everywhere he goes now, he seems to be scoring mid-thirties, so that is great, everyone is awake to him. I don’t think he has improved a great deal over the past couple of years, I just think the judges have woken up to him – that’s nice. I found the same thing when I went overseas, they were very happy to give him a good score. Sometimes in Australia, we think we are very clever but we are nervous about how we will go overseas. The great thing is, at Blenheim, Chris Burton and I were first and second after the dressage – we had Ingrid, Mark Todd, Nicholson, and Fox-Pitt, behind us. That was great, that makes you think you are on the right track – but never complacent.”
“Billy is such a beautiful horse to work with, I think he has scope to go better. He is a very careful horse, I have to be careful that I don’t jump him too much, I’ve got to try and think of other things to do. I do have to be careful because he is very lightly framed, and I’m not small. I have to be very careful about keeping weight on him, and off me. I have to work on improving what we do between fences, and the only way we can do that is competing in those tough events, running down the time as best we can.”
You have a massive business will you be able to create the space
to go to the WEG?
“The interesting thing was last year, you can explain to anyone about the Olympics. For the first time in my entire business life, I left a message on my phone saying, ‘I will be away for the next three months, speak to my manager’ – I’ve never done that, ever. Usually if I am on a long haul, there will be 46 messages on my phone when I get there. I might try that again but I don’t imagine I will be as successful mentioning the World Champs, because the world I live in, they say, who cares? It’s exciting for you, and it is very exciting for me, but most of the people I deal with, they don’t give a damn. But you only live once, and to be honest, Billy Elliot is the horse of a lifetime, so I am going to do everything I can to make it happen.”
This article first appeared in the July 2013 issue of THM.