Story – Chris Hector

Photos – Roz Neave

Although acceptance of contact is no more important than all the other elements of the training scale – like relaxation, rhythm and straightness – contact problems show up so much more obviously. The contact ‘issue’ is the barometer of good riding and correct training, and that was the difficult lesson 13-year-old Jacob Wells was having to absorb in his training session with Michelle Strapp.

Like so many young Australian riders, Jacob was doing it hard, trying to learn his rider skills on Will, a horse that needs education: “It’s not an ideal situation,” Michelle points out, “Jacob really needs a horse with more mileage, but they are so hard to find. This horse is cute, with a nice canter, but it is also very spooky and very cheeky – sometimes it will just stand in the corner saying I don’t want to know…”

Jacob working on improving canter quality and his position…

“The horse is ten years old but has done very little. He’s a Warmblood by Cooperit, who just never remembered to grow. He has a good ground-covering stride for his size, and lots of jump in his canter. However his mouth can be too fine and he likes to travel behind the bridle. Jacob is having to learn – even though the canter felt elevated and the contact was light – it was not a true contact and the canter was elevated because the horse was not going forward from the leg. This all became obvious to Jacob when Will started stopping at spooky fences and Jacob’s leg had no meaning to Will.

…and at the Australian Championships with his schoolmaster, Isle of Rahn

When Michelle first spotted Jacob at a training day almost a year ago, he was something of a rough diamond:

“I met Jacob at a pony club rally in Pakenham. He was smaller than he is now, I’m not sure he knew what lead he was on, he was cutting corners, flying lower legs, couldn’t ride a straight line, eyes down… but he quickly showed he is an impeccable pupil, and he has a task here. For the first time he is having to bring on his own young horse, and it does have one of those mouths that gets offended easily. It’s not easy, but he has a lot of patience, he is diligent, he works hard and he has a lot of discipline. After the rally he emailed me and asked if I would teach him ‘this dressage stuff’ and I couldn’t have taken on a better pupil. He has a lot of natural ability, it is just that no-one had given him any skills…”

The theme for the day is apparent the minute the warm-up begins:

“Remember Jacob, the softness of your arms affects the quality of the release and the contact. Keep your elbows soft and watch that your left hand doesn’t get flat. It is your left arm that gets stiffer. When he comes above the bridle, you be the still one, don’t overreact to his busy-ness in the bridle.”

“If he wants to look at something outside the arena, use a little inside leg so he is thinking about you. The most important thing with spooky horses is that they must be in front of your leg, but you need to concentrate on not letting your elbows get tight – he gets easily offended by the hand.  He is a bit mouthier than he usually is today. The trouble is when horses become fragile to the bridle, you are required to be extremely tactful with your hands, otherwise they are going to overreact to your hands, and be thinking more about your hands than the fence presented in front of them. When he gets busy with his mouth, you be the still one, try and stabilize the contact by just being still, and riding forward on your line and in the rhythm you want to travel. If he does not accept the contact, you are going to find it hard to have adjustability to the fences.”

“You want your hands still, but not with rigid arms, feel your arms melting, your elbows softer – that’s how we will improve your releases…”

“Aim for equal weight to both reins, slightly change the bend at the base of the horse’s neck and in his ribs – slow and smooth – just a little bend to the left, left leg, a little bend outside, right leg, to get him softer in his body not his mouth, then slightly bring your hands forward for a release, all slow and smooth. Learn to feel what his body is doing.”

“When you gave the reins then, he was offended – what does that tell us? That he is easily offended, yes, but also that your arm is tight, that you are not allowing your arm to let go, or he would be used to it. Your goal has to be that in your canter, you can start to give the rein, and he will lower his neck and go forward because that is exactly what you want him to do in the air.”

“Bring the horse over here, I want to feel his mouth.”

Michelle takes a rein and asks the horse to bend to the inside, and he does so comfortably, then she gets Jacob to ride the horse forward in walk, while she maintains contact on the reins.

“What I feel is a horse that is not worried about my hand – see he will walk forward to the contract, but if I bounce the contact, then he is offended. I think part of the problem might be that the horse you previously rode had a wooden mouth, and if you were a bit abrupt with your hands, it didn’t matter. This horse is more sensitive, he’s waiting for the contact to bounce, it does make it difficult for you. However this is what learning is all about, and if you want to develop horses in the future these are skills you will need.”

“You have to be able to use the opening rein, direct rein and release with a floating arm and hands. You have to learn to separate your arms from your body through the air, and not throw your body forward and your legs back with trapped elbows. You need to maintain your position and follow the bridle with your arms, this can only happen if you relax your elbows.”

“Think about it, when you got this horse, you discovered he did not want to go forward to spooky fences and started stopping, so we had to deal with that. You needed to teach him to be more responsive to your leg, and you turned an idle motor into a Ferrari – but with more motor you’ve got to have a better contact. It’s Catch 22, you’ve got him more responsive to your leg, which means he is thinking more forward, but he won’t go into the bridle because he is unhappy with the contact. Your new created energy does not give you the response you want… today he does not want to go forward because of the contact, not because he is slow off the leg. Right now, it’s better that you stay in 1.10m classes and get really confident cantering around them and let’s get a better balance between hand and leg before we step up.”

“Every horse we ride brings out our weak links, by the time you’ve finished with this horse, you’ll have perfect hands. The horse you were used to riding was so big and dull, and you were so small, that you learnt to lug it around – it is important that the next horse for you doesn’t have a ‘tank’ mouth.”

And of course the problem became more of a problem when Jacob starting riding around the little course, so much so, that Michelle decided that it was time to take a step back: “He is much too fragile in the mouth, that’s why you didn’t have many options to that fence. You have a very good instinct to get to a fence, but you had to get rough to manufacture the result, it all gets a bit busy. Keep it simple go back a step, straight lines.”

“Simple changes not flying changes. As he is just running away from the leg, he is not thinking change, still hands, practise those basics over and over, and that is what produces a good horse. It’s a problem with green horses, they are going well and then suddenly a problem appears, like today with the mouth. We have to try and keep it simple and easy, so those problems don’t get out of hand. So today, we go back to the flat, go back to getting the horse confident in your hand, we have to be ready to step back to go forward…”

Later Michelle took time to talk about the issue of contact. I put it to her, that while all the rungs on the training scale were equally important, contact was the issue that showed up most dramatically…

“If you get all the other things – let’s say you get the power working, you get your horse in front of the leg, but if it doesn’t like going to the contact, then it really shows up, the horse has to put its energy somewhere, if not to the contact, then the horse finds many other solutions, generally ones we do not want. You sit on some horses and they are so far behind your leg, the rider thinks the horse has accepted the contact, but they are not actually going there. Contact is the acceptance of power coming forward to it, and being able to contain the power. You direct the horse’s power towards your contact, and I believe that a horse’s hind legs often reflect a rider’s hands. It is about being able to contain power, straightness, about being able to re-balance your horse, and if the horse is unhappy with the contact, you are not going to be able to do anything.   You might as well ride on the end of the buckle… and it’s impossible to jump riding on the buckle unless you are some kind of freak. This is also why we see horses jumping in Hackamores, it gives you control with horses that do not like contact for different reasons. ”

“When I had my very first lesson with George Morris, I was riding Mickey Mouse, and he asked me Michelle what makes your horse go forward? Well my first reaction was ‘leg’, and he said, you are wrong, it’s contact because if you have rigid hands and you create rigid contact, or you have busy hands or you have inconsistent hands – why would the horse ever want to go forward?  It is actually your hand that allows a horse to go forward. That doesn’t mean throw away the reins, it means your hand has got to receive energy. It has got to be able to work with the energy so that the horse feels that it wants to create impulsion slightly past the bridle, without running away. You have to get the feeling that your horse wants to go past your hand to a slight extent, that its hind leg wants to push past you but it doesn’t want to go any further, it is still waiting for you but it is confident to think, yeah, I could if I wanted to. It goes without saying, good contact  is not possible for a rider to achieve, if they do not have an independent and balanced position.”

Julia Hargreaves on making the transition…

Julia is one rider who has dramatically survived the transition from young rider to senior, and now international, competitor. I asked her what she looked for in a young rider horse…

“For me it depends on the young rider and how competent they are, but if I have to choose one for one of my students, I always go for one that is really brave, I think braveness is the most important quality at the start, and then it is great if they are careful also, but I think it is more important that they are brave and scopey. I think it is a mistake to buy something that is too careful, that can rock their confidence too easily, it puts too much pressure on the young rider, when they already have so much pressure going into the ring, just to get through the finish flags.”

It seems to me that it is getting tougher, the standard of young rider competitions is escalating wildly and it is really tough for ambitious young riders to find good horses…

“I agree, the standard is getting higher all the time, and it is getting more difficult to find that top competitive young rider horse. I know that when I was in the young riders, it was really serious and really competitive, and it seemed there was a great group of young rider horses at that time. A lot of them were imported – Emily, Lauren, Jamie and I, all riding horses from overseas, but it is getting harder to find them.”

What happens in that transition, you obviously made it fairly seamlessly from young riders, to open, to Olympic Games, but there are a lot of riders who disappear in that transition period…

“To be honest, there were definitely classes in my young rider career that I won, and I was successful, but I don’t think I was one of those ones who was guaranteed to win every time she went into the arena. If I wrote down every young rider class that I’ve ridden in, the ones that I got eliminated in, or had a stop – mainly stops and stuff like that – it would definitely outweigh the ones in which I placed. I wasn’t that competitive as a young rider.”

“For the transition into World Cup classes, I was lucky enough to have Hayman, and he looked after me really well, but having said that, the first time I started in a World Cup was Sydney Royal and I was eliminated. I didn’t start again until the following year. It is very quickly forgotten, the fact that I was very bad. When I stepped into the open stuff, I was used to not being a threat or competitive, if I can say that without sounding too depressing. I think the young riders that were really, really successful in their junior/young rider careers, in my generation, a few of them have dropped away because they have other interests. I think that might have been why they were so successful because they went into the ring and they just cantered around because they could. They didn’t put themselves under a huge amount of pressure – but for a rider like me, I had worked so hard, all my thoughts and energy went into it, and the outcome was everything to me. Then the pressure made me screw up a lot more.”

If you have a young rider now that you are mentoring, are you saying that you have to shop in Europe, or do you think you can still find good horses in Australia?

“If you can afford to shop in Europe then it is easier. I guess because I’ve spent the past 12 months in Europe, those are the horses that I have seen. I haven’t seen the horses here, so I haven’t been able to watch and pick one out that I know is a good one. Like when we picked Glenorchy Hope for Georgie Harvey, that was an obvious one because I had been watching him for a little while.”

“If you can afford it, I think there are a lot of options in Europe, but you have to be careful where you go, make sure you have a connection that will come out with something that is reliable. It doesn’t mean there aren’t horses here, it’s just that the horses here that you want to buy are probably not for sale – or they want to sell them, but they want to take them to Europe to sell. It’s a bit like Catch 22, those horses that you would buy from here, end up going to Europe anyway. I guess it all depends on your budget.”

Part 1

Story – Chris Hector

Photos – Roz Neave

When you see good teaching, really good instruction, you realise that it is both very simple and very subtle. Michelle Strapp is an exceptional trainer, with a string of successful students to prove it. Sit back and observe this lesson with exciting young showjumping talent, 15-year-old, Sam Robertson. It’s simple, logical, progressive – but the way Michelle communicates these time-honoured principles is always fresh and original…

Sam is lucky, along with his older sisters, Melissa and Annica, he has been a regular student of Michelle’s and it shows in his riding. Sam is riding Smokey an 10 -year-old Warmblood gelding, owned by a friend. He’s getting Smokey ready for a shot at the Junior title at the Australian Showjumping Championships.

Michelle describes the horse as a ‘cheeky Warmblood’ and the rider as ‘a gun’ but a bit of a son-of-a-gun who is not entirely interested in perfecting his flatwork – not that he is going to get out of it.

The young man has a very tidy secure seat, but Michelle wants him to think more about the way the horse is going in trot: “When you do a half-halt, try to keep the same tempo, you don’t want the motor to move away from you. Think about the activity of the hindquarters. You have the tendency with your young horse to try and make up for a loss of activity by riding him flatter and faster, watch out you are not doing the same with this horse.”

Have you been practicing enough riding in dressage length stirrups?

“Er, no.”

“We have a new goal for you, a whole hour of flatwork, without stirrups.”

Michelle comments that sometimes junior riders like Sam, who are successful and do well in events,  can lose sight of the basics , or  not understand the  importance of them: “ Sam has had a wonderful season  in juniors, he has a fabulous disposition in the ring, competition comes easy to him,   however he has to be reminded not to be idle  in the flatwork area.”

They are working on getting the horse softer and rounder:

“When he feels inverted, don’t just pull his head in, soften his body. Think about what he is doing with his body. Now using your inside leg, enlarge the circle, but think about it like a nice curved line to a fence, we do not want him just bulging out of the circle with his shoulders. It’s not just about riding a circle, it is about being able to ride the line and speed in which you want to travel,  keeping your horse’s four legs underneath him, and that is what jumping is all about: getting to the fence on a good line, good rhythm with a balanced horse. You might not like flatwork, so imagine there are fences in front of you on the circle, it gives you more insight and focus towards why you are riding shapes. If you can’t control these factors there is more room for error. You like winning, well that is why we doing flat work, so you can keep winning.

“So think about those two fences. Get your heels down, don’t round your back, you can relax your back, but don’t round it. Legs longer. Now, give after the half-halt, just let your arms go, you do not need to put a loop in the reins, just relax your arms.”

Always, the work on the flat relates directly to the work involved in jumping:

“Go for a little gallop, open the angle of your body to ride the circle. On course you could use up to 20 different angles of your body, it all depends on what is needed to balance your horse. The horse is falling to the inside and putting the weight on its shoulders. Bring your angle back to re-establish the balance and support him with your inside leg. The quicker you can re-establish the balance, the more prepared you are to meet the next fence. It is important for riders to become aware of their horse’s balance, you have to feel it, and correct it, a big bit alone will not do that, it is very hard for horses to jump off their front legs.

And the training techniques, the aids, need to be simple, clear, not busy aids, if they are to work on course, for instance, riding a flying change:

“For the flying changes, just think of keeping straight, find the spot you want to ride to, stay at the speed in which you want to travel, and keep straight.   I do not want to see you twisting your body, pulling inside rein. That’s it, and look, the change just happens.”

It’s the time Sam has been waiting for – time to jump a few fences. There are some poles set up in front of a tiny vertical:

“Concentrate on keeping the horse straight, straight in the neck for the approach. Cluck, when you see a distance that is a little long, cluck and hold with your leg. Don’t get there by moving your body forward, you want the feeling that the horse is jumping up to you, you do not want to get ahead of the motion.”

Michelle is not happy with the way Sam rode the jump: “You made no choices at the pole. Three strides out you could see you had a half distance! Concentrate! Do something!! Whether your distance ends up a little short or a little long, what is important is your reaction to that distance.”

“Now we are going to ride a figure of eight, the vertical on the left rein and the  oxer on the right rein, and be careful that his canter doesn’t get too short  in the turns. Often he lands and his canter is running and out of balance, then when you get him back, the canter ends up too short. Get your body back, not  to shorten the canter, but to get the balance back.”

This time, Michelle is happier with the jump, but… there is always a but.

“I loved that ride to the fence but your body did too much in the air, when you throw your body forward, you spoil the balance of the jump, it can make your horse quick off the ground and through the air.  You are missing the flying changes because he is crooked and running, get your body back,  keep his shoulders on the line in which you want to travel , then use your outside leg. See there, because you corrected his shoulders and balance, he changed.”

“Sometimes he is a little quick off the floor, just ride a good fence, balanced position and let him concentrate on the fence. He is careful enough, so he will learn to come away from the front rail. You have to be slower with your body off the floor. If the fence comes up a bit quick, concentrate on keeping his shoulders straight, do not let him shift across the fence, slow body and soft arms.  Do not start twisting to find the flying change in between the two fences, you’ll find the change if you keep him straight. As you think about re-balancing, be careful you don’t let the horse fall behind you and loose the motor.”

Sam jumps a little course :“My main criticism is that you are a fraction tighter with your hands than you need to be in the air. Don’t throw a release at him, just relax your arms on the last couple of strides, then you will follow the contact much better in the air. Don’t pull him off the ground at the verticals, you are protecting him from the front rail and it  also makes the jump tight.  You might do that at the last fence in competition, because you are hungry to win, and cannot help that instinct, but  it is a big No No  in training. Think about nice soft arms, don’t change the contact, just soft arms and keep the horse’s shoulders straight.”

“Sit up, re-balance and think you’ve got another 20 fences to go… Do not finish the exercise or course sloppy. It has to be a natural instinct at all times to ride your horse in a canter that will successfully take you to the next fence, a unbalanced canter has no use to you.”

Michelle: “Sam is a good little rider, a very competitive rider and he has a wonderful disposition in the ring. He has a wonderful ability to ride young horses, I like to have him here to help me when I’ve got young horses to work, because he is very tactful. He doesn’t make a fuss about anything, just gets the job done.”

“He’s been riding with me since I don’t know how long… since he was 11 or 12, and he is 15 now. He is a super obedient pupil, very disciplined in that if I say to him, ‘go and do this exercise 20 times at home’, he’ll do it 20 times at home. The only thing we’ve just got to watch with him is how he moves through his career, because he is so competitive and he loves to be in the ring and jumping, so I do have to make sure I give him those exercises and he does his flatwork.”

Is it a problem now for young riders, that there are some super rich parents who will spend any amount to get their children the top horses… it’s hard for a youngster to get by with talent?

“It is hard, it’s not impossible but very tough – talent obviously helps but unless a rider like Sam is put on the right horses, he can’t be successful. The only benefit for these kids is that if they learn to ride and school horses, that gives them an added advantage because there are going to be a lot of young horses coming through. That gives them the opportunity to produce horses for breeders, owners, as well as their own. It is difficult though, as the standard goes up, the parents have to keep finding more and more money otherwise they are not going to be competitive.”

“It’s hard with Sam because both his sisters showjump, and their father works and works and works, trying to pay for horses, and all three are nice riders. Annica won the Showjumping Ambassador of the Year, this year – they are all nice, dedicated riders so Dad has to try and supply a team of horses for three kids. Tough.”

Sam, what do you like about showjumping?

“It’s a great sport. I love riding, I love jumping the jumps, it’s just good. I love the sport, I want to do it all the time. I’d like to do it full time when I am older and I think I will. I’m doing Year 9 at the moment, so I still have to do some school-work.”

Michelle has to keep after you to do your flatwork?

“I’d much rather jump than do my flatwork. At the moment I have four horses, two owned by other people and two of my own. I am kept pretty busy riding them all. The grey horse I rode today, Smokey, he’s got no points, the girl who owns him has jumped 1.20m with him. I want to take him to the Australian Champs, and I’ll be trying to win.”

Sam placed at the Australian Championships on Tenterfield

George Sanna talks about buying Young Rider horses…

It seems to be an ongoing problem, horses with a little more experience are just not available – or affordable – and the young riders are having to ride horses that are green…

“It is a huge problem. Obviously the major constraint is budgetary. But even with a very significant budget, between 50 and 100 grand – which is significant but not a European budget – it’s difficult. If you are talking about a highly competitive young rider, the horse is going to be competitive, but at the same time take a joke here or there. A horse that will deal with the mistakes that learning riders make, especially ambitious learning riders, like running against the clock and making dumb choices, to find a horse like that is very difficult. It’s got to be careful enough, certainly it’s got to be brave, athletic, rideable, a bunch of things.”

Is it easier to find them in Europe than Australia?

“Of course. Every sort of horse is easier to find in Europe but your budget in Europe starts pretty much where it tops out in Australia. Then you need another budget again, realistically speaking, we are talking 100 plus.”

Okay, we’ve mortgaged the house, we’ve got a budget, what do we look for – what qualities are essential, what can we compromise on?

“That depends entirely on the level of the rider. The first thing is that it has to ‘fit’ – young riders, especially ones who are ambitious and the ones we are talking about are competition riders who want to be competitive at a national level, are on a very steep learning curve at that time, and you have to be a little careful that you don’t find them something that is absolutely totally in their comfort zone but within a very short space of time will not be competitive enough. In other words, it’s brave, it’s pleasant, it’s sweet and it is exactly what they need this week but actually given that they are on a fairly strong forward trajectory in six, twelve months time, that horse won’t be quite competitive enough. It’s a really nice school master but not what they need down the track.”

“You have to understand what your client wants, what their expectations are, what their ambitions are, and then have a good feel for how they ride, what sort of horse they ride. Some people don’t ride hot horses well, some don’t ride cold horses well. Some smaller girls don’t ride big lumbering horses very well. You’ve got to get a feel for the horse that is going to do the job, then it has got to be sound enough to do the job.”

“What I find is that horsemen who have children at that stage, are much more accepting of soundness or age foibles, because they realise how hard it is to find the product. If you find absolutely the right one and it is a little old or needs a little management, they are used to that because they’ve had that in their past, and they know how to do it. Whereas the ones with no experience, they run away from those things.”

Are you glad you were a young rider in the 60’s not in the 2010s?

“In some ways yes. There was no Young Rider division then, we went straight from Junior to Open, and we didn’t suffer. If you look at that generation of riders, they are still clinging on as the major competitors in the country, or have just stepped away from it. We didn’t suffer, within a five year span there was a massive group of riders who came up through the old grading system, with no young riders, and riding crusty Thoroughbreds… all that sort of stuff, and we survived it.”

“The riders nowadays have got a massive leg in, in terms of how the sport is structured, on top of which they have an incredible range of good coaches to go to, which we didn’t have. In some ways it would be great to be a young rider now and be able to walk up to a coach and give them 80 or 90 bucks, and they spill their guts for an hour – all that they have learnt from bitter experience at two or three Olympic Games. That is amazing, you don’t have that access to top riders as trainers anywhere else in the world. So I think in many ways it is great to be a young rider now, but – BUT – the flip side of the coin is that now you need a much better horse and they cost money. It is tough on those riders who don’t have some coin behind them but at the same time, the ones with real talent do seem to find a way to get there.”

We are back at Coolart Farm on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, where Jamie Coman and his wife, Sue and daughter, Hayley have set up their showjumping centre. Jamie is in a familiar role, standing in the middle of the arena coaching: this time it is Sue riding Laura Santry and her mother, Sue Darvall’s handsome bay Warmblood, Marine, while Hayley is mounted on her front-liner, Just Lately.

They are two very different horses. Hayley’s grey part Connemara pony is never going to be described as elegant ,but he is one of those rarest of creatures, a true schoolmaster. Slightly too feral on the flat to make it as an eventer with his owner, Scott Keach, Just Lately has taken Hayley through the ranks of Young Riders and all the way to her first two World Cup starts last season. Sue’s Marine was quite a star in Young Horse classes, but now at the age of eight is showing real talent as a jumper and has just had his first 1.25 start the previous weekend.
As usual, Jamie is a stickler for getting the flatwork right first. “Get him working on the bending lines, with that snaffle you can really take him and work him, work him on the left and get the bend.”

Jamie usually rides the horse himself, and he is being cheeky: “He makes you look good that horse, Susie, I tell you…”
“Marine is going to be a nice horse, Jamie comments. “He is good on the flat, he works well and he always looks a good picture. He’s a bit uptight in himself, but he’s really learning his trade well. He is quite a careful jumper, a little on the looky side, but also very brave as well which is good because you always want that fine line between looky and also brave.”

He has that tendency to lock into a “dressage” frame when things get confusing…
“Yeah, what they do is they come into the rectangle frame – the “dressage” frame – and I want the oval frame. It is just a matter of teaching him to reach into the bit. He’s starting to do it, but as I commented when Sue was riding him around, it was great he was reaching but he can’t do it on a loose rein. He has to have a connection so he learns to hold your hand deep and work over the back. With another six months of training, and more time in the ring, he’ll learn to let go, and travel deeper, then we’ll see the best of the horse.”

He’s a horse that has done a lot of work at home, now he has to get some competition miles…
“Most definitely. He’s done a lot of work at home over the last three years and has had limited outings, now we’ve got to fast track the competition and get him exposed to every arena we can find.”
And surprise, surprise, we move on to a little pole work.

Gee Jamie, can’t you come up with a few amazing gimmicks to make my story more interesting…
“I don’t vary much from the basics, it’s just making the basics very good.”
At the end of the pole lines, Jamie still wants Sue working on that flexibility: “At the end of the line, work him on a ten metre circle so he really accepts working around your leg.”

Time to jump:
“I like this exercise: ten feet from a rail on the ground to a nice little vertical, two strides to the next rail on the ground. You can jump that either way – jump the canter pole to the fence balanced and make the two strides happen, then come back the other way, do the two strides slowly, then still keep the shape in the horse’s jump without letting him jump out the back because you’ve still got the rail on the ground ten feet away. I find that a good exercise.”

“Slower Sue, you always want to be a bit quick on the two away…”

Now it was Hayley’s turn, and Jamie wanted her sitting deeper on the grey: “Not so strong in your thigh, sit into him.”
Hayley gets Just Lately a little hurried in front of the vertical, and stops the horse: “Keep the reins a little shorter, and come again. Stay very tall, stay very soft.”

And they take the rail nicely, but the perfectionist is not satisfied: “Do it again, and keep your thumbs on top of the reins. Take the reins up nicely, don’t kill the canter, nice and direct, stay soft, stay soft, stay soft. That’s good when he’s slow – you don’t get quick with your shoulder.”

“It’s the old story, if the horse is quick, you stay slow and try and even out the picture. If you get quick with that horse, you end up getting in front of it, shooting away, and then the horse runs away after the jump and then you end up with an argument between horse and rider. Patience… if they want to be quick, you have to learn to slow yourself down, and allow the horse to learn that it can be steady.”

You and Sue are both serious students of jumping bloodlines, so what do you get for your daughter to ride… a Connemara cross!
“It was unusual how that came to be. Scott Keach is a friend, and he didn’t want to sell the horse, so we leased him for Hales. He’s got a few little quirky issues but he looks after my daughter. He’s brave and he’s been a wonderful young rider horse and now we are getting the bonus of moving up to small Grand Prix. We have even been able to get two World Cup rounds out of him, which is a real bonus. I certainly didn’t expect that, I thought he’d make a good Mini-Prix horse. I think we’ll always have to be careful about what World Cups we start him in because we don’t want to break his heart. If we can find the right World Cups, just to give Hayley exposure at that level because when you for a ‘WC” in front of a class, riders ride them differently – and they have to get used to those different pressures. So far Hayley has coped really well, I was impressed in Adelaide and Gawler, the two World Cups, she rode them very well. Really mature and focused…”

What were you concentrating on with Hayley and her horse in the lesson?
“The horse has to learn to slow up, and stay straight. He has always had a left slide, a left drift, so we are forever working on that: just reminding him, be straight, be centred, stay in the air, don’t be too quick off the ground. Let him learn to land and canter away, he likes to land and run away. It’s a matter of getting Hayley into a frame of mind that she starts to trust him, not straight away grab him and say ‘don’t run away’ – some horses you do that with them and they get more scared. You are better just to let them chill out a little… I got her to hop into a light seat for a while, stop the work for a while and have a think about things, and then when we came back in the second session, he was great, much softer, and you have a smiling rider and a happier horse.”

On to the next exercise:
“It’s a the triple combination of oxer, nine feet rail on the ground, nine feet to a vertical, nine feet to a rail on the ground, nine feet to another oxer. This exercise is very good at teaching them to stay slow in the air and learn to hold their shape because they know there is a pole on the ground, but also be in the air and be careful, and hold it all the way through. Sue’s horse gets a little quick doing that by the last part, only because he doesn’t trust himself that he can stay soft and actually sit on his hocks. He’d rather just try and shorten his neck and still keep the same length of stride forward which makes his jumps always a bit quick and crampy. We’ve been working on it, and last weekend at the show, he had quite a big treble, and he jumped it beautifully. What we are doing at home is working when we take him out…”

‘Slow’ was seemingly your message of the day – to both the horses and the riders…
“You have to be slow, you want hang-time in the air, not just getting the job done – I don’t want them just to shift their legs, I want them to be classical and slow in the air… a beautiful picture. The horses today were a little quick I thought. Hayley’s horse is just back in work, he is always more like a pony, he just wants to get the job done, but by the time we finished our session today, he was getting back to where I like him.”

Next issue, Jamie works in Wendy Schaeffer and Koyuna Sunset at the ISS Classic…

?Hayley Coman – Born to Jump

Your Dad is a showjumper, your mother is a showjumper, were you ever tempted to run away and become a super model or a real estate agent…
“Not really. I suppose people looking from the outside, might imagine I’ve been forced into the showjumping, but I’ve been riding since I was young, and I love it with a passion. I did take twelve months off after I finished my HSC and went to France and worked in a ski resort in the Alps, and… it killed me to be away from the horses. No – riding is wonderful, I wouldn’t choose to do anything else.”
You basically manage the operation here at Coolart Farm?
“Since we’ve moved down here to Victoria, I’ve got quite serious about the riding and training, and got into working with the ones we’ve bred. Mum and dad are so busy teaching that I’ve taken over the management of the horses and the young ones, clients’ horses that are coming in. I’m starting to get my own clients, I’m trying to branch out so I am not so attached to mum and dad, so I’m separate. It works well, my parents travel and are away a lot, I’m based here seven days a week, and take care of the property.”
Is it difficult at times with your trainer is also your father?
“Dad and I train really well together, we are both very similar and have the same frame of mind. We both want it to happen so we can be quite tough on ourselves and each other. I don’t actually train with Dad that much, no-where near as much as everyone thinks. I have the occasional lesson before we go to shows… most of the training I do with Dad is in the clinics I got to as a member of the State Squad… I had to get on the State Squad and pay for the clinics to have lessons with my dad!”
“So we don’t have a lot of one-on-one sessions, but when we do, it is usually quite productive, we both have the same thoughts on how we want things to happen. There’s always that good factor, I guess there is always the tension of father and daughter… but it works well.”
Your grey horse, Just Lately looks a cheeky little customer?
“He is a Connemara / Thoroughbred cross. He is very hot and very sensitive, very sensitive to anyone on the ground, to noise, anything different. He is very tricky. He is quite strong, he’s had a lot of bit changes and he can go through three or four bits in a show but he’s a little star, he’s a gem. He has a heart the size of himself, he’s had his first couple of World Cup starts, and he was just fantastic. He was an eventer originally, but he was too hot for eventing, his dressage wasn’t good enough. His owner Scott Keach moved to America and asked me if I wanted to take him on. Together we’ve gone through Young Riders to Mini-Prix to Grand Prix… he’s a great horse, and my best friend.”

?Sue Coman – Sharing the Passion

?“For us, showjumping is such a passion… we work all day together. Sometimes you need time off, and you’ve got your coaching and your pupils, but we do rely a lot on each other with the training – and on Hayley too, it’s great…”
Was it a big challenge moving down from NSW to Victoria?
“It was, and I was probably the doubter, because being from Queensland I love the warmth. I always loved doing the Victorian shows but I thought living down here might be a bit harder. Jamie was doing clinics at Marine Park and he said, come and have a look around and see if you like it, and I loved it. I love teaching the young riders, juniors and amateurs, they are great to teach, they want to learn, and there’s lots around here who are really keen. The shows are great for us at this stage because we’ve got a lot of young horses coming through, neither of us have Grand Prix horses at the moment, but there’s a lot of variety. Within an hour you can have a choice of several competitions, most weekends.”
But you still have the ambition to get out on the Grand Prix circuit again?
“It would be great to have a horse at that level, love it. It’s a long way to go, but a couple of the youngsters that we’ve bred, we’ve got big hopes for them. That’s my aim at the moment, to produce a horse for the Grand Prix and the World Cups, because I love that end of it – like anyone who rides all the time – but at the moment I have to be happy with the baby classes. It’s nice to think you can get on and actually jump something bigger than one metre twenty for a change, I’m really looking forward to that.”
That was a sweet horse you rode today?
“A very nice horse. Laura has done a really good job with him. Jamie has taken over the ride for the last three or four months and he has come a long way in that time – he’s gone from D to C. He wants to do the right thing and he’s a lovely horse to sit on. Scope-wise, he needs to learn to be a little softer but that will come with time. We’ve got big hopes for him too.”

?Jamie Coman – Off to Europe

?“We were very fortunate to meet Mary and George Reed when we moved to Camden. Mary was like a mother to Sue, and a grand-mother to Hayley. She had a fantastic eye for a horse – Thoroughbreds, Ponies, Hacks, she had a great eye, and you just had to listen to her because she had such knowledge and experience. She would tell you something and you might not take it in at the time, and three months later, yes, she was right, that is a good horse… she was not very often wrong. The Reeds owned a number of good horses that we rode.”
“We moved to Camden in 1988 and in 1997 I made my first trip to Europe. I had the opportunity to try for the World Championships with Modra, owned by Cheryl Hunter. At my own expense, I was able to go over and train with our then National Coach, Albert Voorn. I was looking for that sort of opportunity, it would have been nice if the whole family had been able to go, but it wasn’t possible. I just loved being over there. Modra carried me around Europe – everywhere – he was always there in the placings. I don’t think I realized at the time just how good he was.”
“As it turned out, he was sold two weeks before they named the WEG team, but still I’d had that experience of riding in Europe.”
Albert Voorn was a bit unusual in his coaching…
“His coaching was pretty much here it is, this is the way – there was no left or right, that was it, there was one program and that was that. His way was great for my riding, I loved his classical riding style, I thought he could have brought a lot to Australia in that way, teaching our riders to be super classical, but he was dealing with a lot of Thoroughbreds in Australia, and he just didn’t have the feel for Thoroughbreds. He could ride them but he couldn’t explain what he was doing to make this horse go. You’d get on and try to ride the horse the same, and it wouldn’t happen. But he was such a talented rider…”
“His system was pretty well that you left the horse to its own devices. You left them where their nose wanted to be, if they were fresh you lunged them until they tired – there was no real flat or dressage work. I expected to go there and train dressage and have the horses very round and all that, but he wanted to keep it very natural, where the horse was, that was how it was, stay in the one rhythm with your canter stride…”
He didn’t do any lateral work did he?
“Very little but then again, every horse that he had, he’d taken on, they’d been trained as young ones and obviously knew that work. But I think our riders here in Australia, needed to do more flat work. The jumping side was fantastic, we just needed to do more dressage with him. He needed to show us more dressage riding but that wasn’t his thinking – he said, just ride the horse naturally.”
“I stayed at Albert’s for eleven months, then when the horse was sold, I came home. I met so many coaches and trainers while I was over there, and I kept in touch, not only with Albert, but with the other trainers I’d met. I came home and we had another horse that we thought could go to the Games, so I came home very focused and worked very hard – and made it, that was the Sydney Games with JJ Zazu.”
Next month – Jamie at the Games…

You can tell in those crucial first couple of steps when horses – particularly young horses – have been ridden correctly… they go easily and without fuss into a nice frame. I guess, given Jamie Coman’s reputation for demanding first class work on the flat, it should come as no surprise that the minute his wife, Sue, and her four year old Nic of Time (by Nicklaus) and daughter, Hayley’s four year old Coolart Farm Hopscotch (by Hamlet) hit the dressage arena, that both the babies were sweetly operating.

“Hayley, bend him a little to the outside, now a little to the inside, Sue, make sure the reins are even, don’t get to working on one rein…” Jamie knows that good riding and excellent training comes from attention to the details.
The riders are working the long side of the arena and Jamie has three poles sitting in cups attached to the fence and on the ground in the arena, it’s an exercise to get both horse and rider looking, reading the distances, but the introduction of a jumping element must not spoil the quality of the work…

“Circle at the end, make him listen to your inside leg, make him soft. Hayley, with your horse, I want you to slow him down and keep the bend as you go down the line.”

And when Jamie still isn’t happy, Hayley is to pop over the first, make a fifteen metre circle, pop the second, make another little circle, and over the last rail. “Now soften, and let him stretch more… Be careful, you are trying to force him into a beautiful shape, you must let him go and let him find that beautiful shape. Remember he is only four years old, let him learn to carry you in a light seat. Try it on the right rein…”

So Hayley tries it on the right rein, and finds three awful spots.
“Don’t anticipate, let him focus and find a distance. Don’t you try to tell him too much.”
Talking later, Jamie emphasised, letting the young horse learn its own lessons:
“They have got to find their balance in carrying the rider, getting stronger and growing up, learning to focus from one fence to the other. I put the poles down the long side to help them learn, give them something else to do. Ask them to bend around the inside leg, but give them a little pole as well so they have got to keep their attention on what they are doing – so they don’t get bored with their work. And it is good for the rider, you can teach them to close the canter up so much more by that exercise, than just trying to force them on the flat.”

You were very insistent on keeping that bend around the inside leg…
“I always want them to work from behind through, and be soft, so they learn to travel through their turns very balanced and very nice.”
The next exercise was more of the same.

A pole on the ground, nine yards to a little vertical, then nine or ten yards to another pole. “Again this is just encouraging them to find and learn that they can have two strides from that pole to the fence. We make the rider accurate by jumping the pole and then just allowing the two strides to happen. I want them to land and think about the pole on the other side, and carry two strides to that pole. In doing that you can work on the rider as well, their lower leg, check their eye is up, and they have a soft release at the base of the fence.”

Once again, it is an exercise for horse and rider, and this time Jamie is emphasising the need for a nice connection: “Sue, keep that nice connection all the way. I’ve closed the distance up a bit, so try to let him get a little more to the base. Don’t throw your body too much, be careful not to twist your body on landing, land with an even pressure on both stirrups.”

The next exercise was once again working on bend and softness. A circle with a pole in front of a tiny vertical. “This little fan, with a pole on either side of the jump: two metres on the inside, and four metres on the outside, jumping the pole in the centre on the circle. Make them come around the leg, try and get the horse soft. In doing that exercise we also had the horse thinking about the little jump, teaching them technique in front. So they learn later in jump-offs, they can be turning in the air, and still hold the technique in their jump.”

It was Hayley’s turn to try the exercise. ‘What do you think is going to happen?’ Jamie asks his daughter. “It could be interesting…” “Just let him find his way, let him learn to carry you softly. Don’t anticipate what is going to happen, wait for him, stay with your horse as a combination.”

And of course, the exercise comes up beautifully, but Jamie has a point to make: “When you start to anticipate, then you get in front of the horse. It’s the same with the flying changes, don’t anticipate, wait until you can feel the job is done. This exercise is good for your eye, and for getting a nice, soft jump.”

It was time to move on to the final exercise: a pole, nine feet to a little plank, nine feet to another little plank, ten feet to a little oxer, then three strides to a narrow fence.
“It’s just a little bounce. A canter pole to it again – always use a canter pole because then we know we are going to get our young horses there safe. The rider has to focus and make sure they get it right at the pole. Then nine feet to the little plank, nine feet again to another plank, then ten feet with a little more room, to a little oxer. Having an oxer in a bounce is quite tough work, so I kept it very small. Although they had to focus ahead, the three strides to the little narrow fence, they still have know where their legs are. They have to be thinking, ‘direction straight ahead’ but knowing that they have to get their legs out of the road, and use their technique.”You were using side poles in the jump, and at the end of the jump?

“Yes, because I never want my rider to really take their mouth and take away any jump the horse is producing. I want to encourage horses always to make a good shape themselves. You don’t want to be guiding them too much. They need to learn the direction from the leg, not too much hand. The hand is always good as a soft hand, but not so much as a guiding hand.”

“Sue try popping him through these little bounces, then three strides to the skinny, and at the end of the line, work the circle again and get him listening to you… we don’t want him to focus on the stables. Let him make a little mistake, let him learn to focus on the top rail.”
“How was that?”
“It was awful.”
“Take an even contact on the reins and hold him a little straighter in the line. Better, but do it again, it still looks a bit hurried. It looks like you have to do too much with your hand.”
“He’s all over the place.”
“He’s a baby. That’s why I’ve got the skinny at the end, they learn to get their attention on a skinny fence. He’s got to learn you can close him with the leg and hand and then get soft, close and he doesn’t get quicker but he is just a baby.”
And it was enough work for one day for babies.

With young horses like these two, how many times a week would they work like this?
“Normally they would do at least 20/25 minutes working on the flat, a lot of walking and getting them soft and bending and learning how to go in a shape, and then at the end of a session, two times a week, they would do little gymnastics, like that, the gymnastic work just finishing off the work on the flat. Maybe going through the exercise six times and that is enough because you don’t want them to wear out as young horses.”

When do you start to take your young horses to a competition?
“These two have just started. We took them to the Australian Championships for the small classes, they did the 90 cm and metre five classes, and they coped very well. They will only do four or five shows maximum, and then they will have a rest, and then we start again. The way we spell them is, they are shod for five weeks, then we pull their shoes off for five weeks to rest them. We just work on a shoeing basis, five weeks on, five weeks off, then they don’t get sour, they enjoy their work…”

And it is not just the horses that have enjoyed the session. Hayley is jokes as we leave the arena, “It is great having you come down to do an article, that way I get a lesson, it’s the first lesson I’ve had in a month, you should come more often.”
And we did – read part two of this series as Jamie, Sue and Hayley move up the training and jumping scale…

Jamie Coman – Horses are my life…

“I’ve been riding for years. I grew up on a dairy farm on the NSW South Coast, and grew up riding with my father. When I was two I’d be on a pony tied to my father’s pony. I’ve been involved with horses all my life – Horse are my life.”

“I went through Pony Club, just another rider, maybe I used to win the Sporting events. Pony Club is a great learning base, you learn how to win, you learn how to be competitive, but it is all fun. Pony Club was just part of growing up then, that was what you did. It’s a good grounding, and a lot of people can afford Pony Club. The average family can go to Pony Club, and they can have a normal horse. I just rode Stock horses, then the Thoroughbreds started coming from the track. Normal horses and you made the most of what you had. I learnt my trade as a cabinet maker, but always my ambition was to ride.”

“For me it was always showjumping. Just watching the videos of Wentworth Park, and the shows in Western Australia in the days of the Bond Series… thinking, I’d love to do that. It looked great. Where I came from it was very hard to go and see those better riders. We were in the middle of the Bega Valley and to go either way was always a journey.”

“I’d made up my mind that I wanted to showjump properly so I just kept trying. I didn’t have anyone to teach me. I just watched, there were instructors at Pony club, but no proper coach until met Rod Brown. I found I could just work with him. I would have been 24 when I met him. I’d just started doing shows like Wentworth Park. I’d done that once and really enjoyed it, loved the big scene.”

“When Sue and I moved to Camden, we started to train with Rod.”

What was the first good horse?
“I had a really good horse that we bought from the sale yard, The Smuggler. He was a station bred horse – Thoroughbred over a Station mare. He was not a fast enough walker for the station, so he went to the Sales. I think we paid $175 for him. He competed Grand Prix. He placed at Wentworth Park in my first year. There used to be a show before Wentworth Park, the Andronicus Coffee show, and I won a class there. To me, that was a big deal. I’d never been to Sydney and to win a class like that meant everything. He was a great horse, he went on to compete for a lady in New Zealand.”

Somewhere along the way, you have met up with your wife, Sue?
“After I’d done Wentworth Park, I started to do the bigger shows, she was competing, we met as friends. Then – yeah – I don’t know how it happened. We were at the Australian Championships at Geelong one year. It was her birthday, so we went out for a drink and I guess I ended up the birthday present. We’d met as shows just as competitors and good friends, but that was it after those championships. I moved to Queensland where she lived, pretty well straight away. We lived there for a while but we decided we needed to be where the scene was, and the scene was Sydney.”

“We set up our own little stables in Camden and I was full-time into horses, trying to produce showjumpers. We had great success, we’ve had some wonderful horses – like Mr Midnight, Casual… Modra, he took me to the other side of the world. He was a tough horse to ride but he carted me around some of the biggest tracks I’ve ever jumped, or ever will jump. He was a great little horse. Then of course, the Zazu horse that took me to the Sydney Games.”

Tough setting out on your own?

“It was, we’d bought a property, and needed to pay for that – and getting a name. Then the market was pretty well the Japanese market. They wanted them at a particular standard and age, and you had to produce… you had to do a lot of shows to get the performances for these horses. But we had good success, produced a lot of horses, tried a lot of horses – and you get to know what is good and what doesn’t work. I’d just started teaching then, but riding was what I wanted to do.”

What do you think you learnt from Rod Brown?
“He has so much knowledge. He can tell you about a show in any country anywhere in the world, and he can explain it so well, that when you do get there, you feel like you have already been there. He was always wanting good quality jumping horses and good quality riding, and that’s what I wanted to do. If I was going showjumping, I wanted to do it as good as I possibly could, and have the best horses that I could possibly produce…”

But this was a time in Australian jumping history when there was a lot of wild cowboys riding, you picked a minority stream?
“Yeah, I watched Rod ride and thought that’s how we want to do it, we want to be classical in our riding. We were just being introduced to people like George Morris, and it was amazing to do his clinics. He wanted you to be very classical in your ride.’

Was a clinic with George a shock?
“Very much so, in that he was tough, and he told you – if you rode awful, or untidy, or scruffy, he told you. There was no being nice about it, you fix it. If you want to train with me, you have to do it this way. It was good to have someone like that who made you a little scared of them and made you try harder. You made yourself ride well.”

But you teach like George, you are always looking at the details…
“I am picky like that, there is always something else. Every time I see one of my riders ride, I imagine I am riding that horse, and I know myself how I want to finish everything off, I always want a good picture. It may be right that we’ve got that exercise over and done with, but the job is not finished.”

Is it tough teaching your wife and your daughter?
“No, it’s great. Hayley and I are very similar. We work together very well, Sue is great to work with, and very knowledgeable. I’ve been very protective of Hayley, with what young horses I’ve let her ride, but now she is working with the young ones. She runs our stables for us, and she’s got the confidence and the ability to do it, it has to be run as a business, and that means she has to take over riding a lot of the young horses. I just guide her along the way, and she is doing a good job with them…”

We continue our jump-by-jump examination of what it takes to get around a showjumping course with master coach, George Sanna.
Last month we looked at verticals – this month – oxers.

“When we were discussing verticals I mentioned that in many ways the oxer is an easier jump – the horse balances itself and maybe there is a little less pressure on the rider from a distance point of view. But having said that, it is also fair to say that the oxer incorporates the difficulties of the vertical with the added difficulty of the spread.”
“I think the important thing with the oxer is the canter. The difference in the canter between the vertical and the oxer, is that the oxer canter normally has more pace, a little more forward – and there is a difference between speed and forwardness.”
“Speed and forwardness are concepts that confuse a lot of people. Speed affects the time it takes to get from A to B. It has a significant effect on the length of the horse’s stride, so if you go fast the chances are his stride will be longer. It is possible for a horse to take quick short steps if he is busy, but normally if you increase the pace, then you increase the stride. Forwardness is something that has nothing to do with the length of the stride, or the speed of the horse. It is a mood, it is a balance, it is a mindset. It is an essential ingredient to creating good distances to jumps. Forwardness is really probably the single more important part of creating a good distance. Basically when we talk about forwardness we talk about an activity and a willingness to go forward. That is essential for every jump.”
“With the oxer we will probably have more pace. We need the horse to take a longer jump – so as we said at the beginning, the horse’s jump is reflected in his canter. We need more pace, we can probably ride to a distance that is a little deeper than we rode to the vertical. Assuming we start with a vertical and an oxer that look identical in front and the oxer simply has a back element to it – we can ride deeper to that oxer. You’ll notice that, if you have a vertical vertical combination, set at let’s say 24 feet, which is just a normal standard one-stride distance, that will actually ride quite short. If you make it vertical / oxer, it will ride moderately normal, and if you have oxer to oxer, you actually might ride a little positive, simply because the horse gets in deeper and lands shorter.”
“With the vertical, the top of the horse’s trajectory is where the rail is, whereas with the oxer, the top of the horse’s trajectory is between the front and the back rails. He is going to jump a slightly different shaped jump, but he is going to jump it from a little closer, he is going to jump the front rail on the way up, and he is going to jump the back rail on the way down – so he is going to land a little steep as well. He is actually going to land closer to the back rail and take off closer to the front rail than he would if it was a vertical.”
“When you are walking distances you have to be aware of that.”
“To ride the oxer we must have a canter that is more positive and more forward through the turn. Very rarely can we turn as short to an oxer in the jump-off as we can with the vertical – because we have to have that forwardness and that ground speed. We’ve got to take a line through the curve that enables us to maintain our pace – whereas to a vertical, we can turn very short, and provided we end up with the distance and a bit of activity, it doesn’t matter how slow we are, the horse can pop up in the air and land comfortably. With the oxer, the same ride will get us landing on the back rail. Maintaining our pace and our forwardness is a critical aspect of jumping oxers.”
Problem areas?
“We have problem areas in that if we get too deep, the horse jumps up in the air, and lands on the back rail – or he picks the front rail up on the way through. Similarly if we stand off, then obviously the back rail is at risk as well. We can probably get away with a slightly more unbalanced approach – not that we want to be doing that – to an oxer because the horse will balance himself more because of the substance of the jump, however once the fence gets sizeable, there is not a lot of tolerance for a poor distance.”
Schooling principles?
“It depends. Some horses naturally have a lot of power off the ground and they get to the back rail very easily. Other horses are weaker off the ground – weakness off the ground will give you oxer issues. The horse needs to get off the ground with a fair amount of power to jump comfortably to the back rail. So creating energy off the ground can often be helped with a stick on the take off stride, give him a little tap behind your leg. Creating energy and strength off the ground is often very good for the horse that is weak at the oxers.”
“When horses lose confidence with amateurs, it will more likely happen at the oxers than the verticals. They can sort of dribble into the bottom of a vertical and climb up over it and land; if they do that at the oxers they land on the back rail on their stifles and one or two of those and they pack it in very quickly. Strength and being positive is a critical part of jumping oxers.”

“If we are talking gymnastics, then when we start horses off, we always do simple grids. A trot and a pop and a bounce, a one stride and an oxer out – I think that’s fine, but I don’t think there is anything unique to an oxer as opposed to another jump. All the principles – finding a good distance, an active canter, forwardness, strength off the ground, straightness – that’s universal to all jumps. If there is one thing about oxers, that is essential, that is strength off the ground.”

]]> http://www.horsemagazine.com/thm/2012/09/george-sanna-riding-a-course-the-oxer/feed/ 0 http://www.horsemagazine.com/thm/2012/09/jump-by-jump-with-george-sanna-part-2/ http://www.horsemagazine.com/thm/2012/09/jump-by-jump-with-george-sanna-part-2/#comments Fri, 21 Sep 2012 05:32:09 +0000 chris http://www.horsemagazine.com/thm/?p=9044

This month we continue our jump-by-jump series and look at the ‘simplest’ of the showjumping obstacles, the vertical.

According to George: “I think the first thing to understand about jumping any jump is that the jump is by and large an extension of the canter. If the canter is flat and long, then most likely, the jump will be flat and long. If the canter is short and bouncy, then he’s going to jump up in the air with not a lot of scope. That’s the first thing to get a grip on: if you are jumping verticals, your canter needs to be higher and more collected, shorter and higher to reflect the sort of jump you want to jump. If you are jumping an open water jump, which is the other extreme from the vertical, then you need ground speed and your canter must be close to a decent sort of galloping stride.”

“In between – on the ascending order, your vertical, the stile, planks on flat cups are the very very verticals. Then the verticals with substance, a wall or something with a very strong fill, that the horse will read better and back up more but the jump still needs to be ridden like a vertical. Then we’ve got narrow oxers ranging to wider and wider oxers, then triple bars – an ascending oxer where the horse can be longer and flatter and on to water jumps. That’s how we go from high and short to low and long.”

“Our canter has to reflect what sort of jump we are approaching. When we are jumping 80 or 90 centimetres, probably because the verticals are not that vertical and the oxers are not that wide, probably the same canter is going to do it for us pretty comfortably – but when we are jumping a metre twenty, thirty and bigger, then the difference in the type of jump has really got to be reflected in the canter.”
What are the kind of problems that we encounter with verticals?

“It’s fair to say Australian horses have not got a history of jumping tall verticals very well. It’s partly because they are not so well schooled and partly because we ride Thoroughbreds, whose natural inclination is forward and long. Thoroughbreds are not physically and temperamentally set up to jump the verticals – with good training they can learn to jump them pretty well, but the Warmbloods with the higher knee action, hocks under them more naturally, and built more up in front, but still round, have the advantage. The Thoroughbred that is up in front is normally hollow, and if he is down in front then he is on the forehand. The Warmblood can be up in front and still round and carrying himself, so he is naturally better set up to do the job.”

“I think there is a training aspect to it as well, where Australian riders by and large don’t create the variety of canters that you need for the variety of jumps. That’s the less sophisticated riders, but I am sure that’s the same with less sophisticated riders all over the world.”

“The other major issue with verticals is that the distance is more critical, even though that sounds like it shouldn’t be the case, you would think that with a square oxer that is the same height as the vertical and has the spread element – you would think your distance would be more critical because the horse not only has to get his front legs off the front but he has to get to the back. But for a reason I have never discovered a good logical explanation for, horses do a far better job of reading the distance to an oxer than they do to a vertical. If you ride a moderately careful horse to an oxer, and you ride him forward to a deep distance, he will back up and rock back on his hocks, and get back off that front rail – whereas if you ride him exactly the same way to a vertical, he is more likely to run himself deep and hang his legs off it.”

“It has never been explained to me why this is so, and I’ve thought about it a lot. I have my take on that, which is that the horse looks at the totality of the fence, and the oxer creates more visual substance and backs him up more – just like a solid fence will back a horse up more than a very empty looking jump. The horse will do more to help you with the distance to the oxer than the vertical. In that respect there is a greater onus on the rider to create a very good distance to a vertical, especially a distance that is not too deep. The ideal way to ride a tall vertical is to ride with a very balanced, fairly active canter that is well connected, and ride him to a distance that gives him enough room to read the jump and get his front legs out of the way.”

“The rider should be very balanced in his or her body for the same reason the horse backs off and organizes his jump better at the oxer than the vertical. The horse is more susceptible to lose his balance if the rider throws his body, or the rider does something unbalanced with his body. The whole balance is more fragile to the vertical than the oxer. The rider who throws his body, or throws the rein at the horse, he is much more likely to have the fence down, than if he rode an oxer the same way. The horse is not normally as well balanced to the vertical so it puts a greater onus on the rider.”
Are there gymnastics that you like to use to improve the horse’s ability to handle verticals?

“No, I’ not a gymnastic freak. I’m a big believer in ground lines for green horses. A nice comfortable ground line. You see people with ground lines that almost look like in and outs – I think that’s over the top. The reason a ground line helps a horse jump a vertical is that the green horse will normally get his height a little late. He thinks the jump is further away than it is, and he buries himself and then struggles to get his front end out of the road. What a ground line does is that it tricks the horse into believing that vertical plane of the jump is above where the ground line is, so he organizes his distance and his balance to the ground line, rather to where the jump really is, and that gives him more room – so he learns to jump the jump confidently without hitting it excessively and twisting and screwing himself out of the road. So he learns to rock himself and find his range to the verticals a lot better. I think ground lines are an important part of training young horses to jump good verticals.”

“Okay little gymnastics are terrific, but not to catch them out – not to have them hanging their legs all over the rails but to give them a comfortable space. A little bounce is good with a ground line. Little in and outs, they are fine: people think that a horse with a slow front end, that struggles with his verticals, they need to be put deep all the time, so they have to learn to be quick – but in my experience, if you pressure a horse’s weakness, you actually exacerbate the weakness. You’ve got to find a way for the horse to learn to do it in a comfortable way, so that the result is confident and solid.”

Next month we look at oxers…

This series of articles with showjumping master-coach, George Sanna will take you jump by jump through the obstacles you are likely to encounter in a showjumping round but before you even get to enter the ring, there is another fence that you should be able to use constructively to help you in your round – the practice fence.

According to George: “You have to remember that practice jumps are verticals and oxers, so this part will over-lap some of our later discussion of these sorts of fences.”

“There are some riders in Australia who do use their time in the practice ring wisely, but others who don’t – some are very unstructured.”

And what’s the difference between a structured and unstructured approach in the warm-up ring?

“Number one, having someone to help you. Number two, having a plan that sets out a progression in your jumps, a plan that is not only logical for all horses, but is especially tailored for your horse’s issues or weaknesses. Whether he has straightness issues, or scope issues and trouble jumping the taller verticals or something like that.”

“So your warm-up has to be directed a little bit towards the horse’s natural way of jumping, and what things need to be reinforced. Getting the dull horse alive, getting the hot horse cool – jumping sufficient numbers of jumps that prepare you well to deal with his weaknesses. If there is something on the course that you think will cause your horse a special problem – then you should try and think of some way you can prepare him for that.”

“For example, if you are getting ready for the jump off, and you are going to jump fence number one, come with a very very short turn right to a tall vertical to number two, then I think it’s a dam good idea to give him a short right turn back to a vertical at the practice jump.”
When you say you need someone to help – is that just to pick up poles or do you need someone to be more directive than that…

“Absolutely the first, and preferably the both. Some people are not in the position to have their coach with them, but you must have a helper at the practice jump. I so often see amateurs – they are already nervous, they are already intimidated by all the professionals in the ring – and their time is getting closer and closer and in the end they pluck up the courage and head at a jump – which is way too big for them – because they have no-one to give them the jump that they need. The horse stops, and there is no recovering from that. I see that quite a lot and it is very sad. Often they’ve got someone standing on the edge of the ring, or ready with a video camera on the other side – that is not where they should be.”

Is that a problem with people riding over the top of you, and lots of other horses all trying to use the same jump?

“It is very intimidating for novice riders. I don’t find it intimidating in Australia because I’m the guy who is intimidating everyone else – although I do try to be fair and look after the others. But when I am overseas, and I don’t know everybody and I don’t know the routine so well, I get a little intimidated myself, even though I’ve done it many times and I am not a shrinking violet. It is intimidating and I would imagine for the riders coming on to the scene anywhere, it is very intimidating. Not knowing what to do, not knowing when you can demand the practice jump – especially if you’ve got no one there to help you.”

When can you demand the practice jump?
“You certainly have the right to the practice jump in front of anyone who is behind you in the draw. Different parts of the world have different systems. We operate on the European system for the practice jump where you normally have a vertical, an oxer and if you are lucky, a cross rail. The cross rail is just there to be popped, then the vertical and oxer is used quite often by two or three riders simultaneously and they whip it up and down.”

“You want to be jumping jumps, five horses before you go in to the ring.”

“It does create pressures, there are probably five or six people already jumping, it can create tension and it can create friction – even a bit of drama.”
Are we aiming to build the horse’s confidence or do we want to give him a decent rap to wake him up?

“Depends on the horse. The deliberate rail technique is only for the professional – the amateurs will probably do it in the course of having the odd short or long distance, their horse is already alert. It’s the professionals who give their horses a very consistent even ride, that occasionally need to give them a little surprise with the distance or a surprise with the jump – by having something a little rampy and rising, several times, then square it up – if the horse is not sharp he is going to give it a rub – the amateurs do that without trying.”
Can you over-jump them in the practice ring?

“Many people do. I think an ideal warm-up is maybe a cross rail or two, a little vertical – when I say little I’m talking about where that horse is at, if it is D grader, a little vertical is 90 centimetres, if he is an A grader, it is probably a metre fifteen – a couple of times, off each rein, make it a little bit bigger, again, once off each rein. A little oxer, off each rein, bigger oxer, then a substantial oxer maybe once or twice. Normally finish with a tall vertical but you might finish with an oxer if the first fence is an oxer or if your horse is a little bit cold and you want to get him jumping a good strong one before you go in. So we are only talking about sixteen jumps. There are people who jump 30 or 40 – that’s way over the top, unless your horse is off its face and you are trying to get it into a bit of a routine – pop and pop and pop and pop. For a normal horse in a normal situation, less than twenty jumps for sure.”

Like our dressage riders, showjumping riders have to find the balance, a horse that is light, but not too light, a horse that is on the aids and that will try to find the contact. For jumpers this is doubly essential because it lets them shorten and lengthen the stride and find that elusive ‘right’ spot…

“What I’m looking for in Ben’s riding is the right contact – where the horse is in self carriage, he can feel his horse’s mouth a little, but not too much. If Ben has got a slight problem, he gets a little rigid and strong with his arms,  that’s a boy thing, a physical thing. Otherwise he is a beautiful rider, he busts his gut to get it right, he has a real passion for the sport. He’s been with me for over a year now, since the George Morris clinic last year. He’d spoken to George about his options in Europe or the States, and George mentioned it to me, and I said, ‘gosh I’d like a boy like that here’. George said, ‘Vicki that would be perfect, he’d learn a lot from you’. At this year’s clinic we talked with George – ok how long before we send Ben to Europe and the next step in his education? George’s feeling is that he should do more work with me, which is nice, and George wants to know where he is going to go to make sure he does get real opportunities.”

“It’s probably a good opportunity for Ben because I’m not riding as many as I used to. Ben gets to ride all the young ones. He’s riding a six-year-old mare I bred by Errol (Premier Des Hayettes), Nikki Des Hayettes, who is nearly C Grade.

“The horse he’s riding today is his Thoroughbred– it’s a wonderful horse and quite careful. I don’t know if he is good enough to go all the way, but he is good enough for this boy because he is still learning his craft. He’s quite a trainable horse.”

What do you want in the warmup?

“Ben knows our system quite well, I don’t have to tell him much. Obviously everything is modeled on the George Morris philosophy, lots of transitions, they’ve got to have gas, they’ve got to have brakes, they have to be straight. The horse has to be forward and straight until you tell it otherwise, and this is the hard thing to get through to riders, that they don’t just ride off their horses’ heads. Riders just worry about the horse’s head – but the horse has a hindquarter, a shoulder, and a head and neck. The rider’s lower leg controls the hindquarter, to a certain extent the shoulder is positioned by the legs and hands, and the head and neck are controlled by the rider’s hands,  the horse has to think forward and straight. You don’t use the reins to turn the horse, you use the reins to create a bend, your legs turn the horse.”

“The hardest thing is for people to use their legs effectively, because the horse will spend every minute of its life trying to stop the rider using his legs, because legs mean they have to work, and that is why riders start doing a lot with their hands, and their seat. The horse has succeeded in stopping the rider using his or her legs – so the rider uses the other aids. The problem with horses is that they have no lateral thinking, they don’t understand that if they stop the rider using his legs, he is just going to use his hands. As a rider you have to think every day, am I using enough leg to make things happen?”

“The horse has two reactions to the rider’s leg. The hot horse will run away from the leg, so riders take their legs off, or the cold horse will just ignore the leg, the rider can be kicking away, but nothing happens.”

“We will start off using poles on the ground and cavallettis. I use them because you can use them every day: they are especially useful for riders with only one horse.  You can use poles and cavallettis all you like: you won’t be wearing the horse out, they will help you learn to find a distance, and you are not making the horse sick to death with jumping, nor are you scaring the horse by missing a distance when you are only going over something that is no bigger than a cross rail.”

“One issue with Ben’s horse is that it can get a little heavy, a little leany. I’ve hammered Ben because he’s done too much with his hands, trying to get his horse back on his hocks: the result of a correct half halt is that the horse goes forward, and goes forward in a balance, that is what you are aiming at. This horse is a real one for getting heavy and planky and then he doesn’t jump a good fence because he’s too much on his forehand.”

“Pop him over the cavallettis. We stay at flat stirrup length at this stage, until we are about to do some real jumping.”

“Just go back and forth Ben, don’t change your upper body, stay in the middle.”

“Now stop him, stop him one time, that’s it, do the little back up.”

“The back up gets the horse on his hocks and off his forehand. They cannot jump off their front end, yet everyone is obsessed about getting their heads down.”

The next exercise had Ben trotting over some small fences…

“Normally I have the fences across the hill because it is easier, but when George Morris is here, he makes sure all the exercises are up and down the hill so the jumps are still like that, then through the year gradually they get back to across the hill…”

What is this exercise for?

“It is good for riders to trot fences so they don’t get in front of the movement. It is also quite good for the horse, it is a totally no-risk exercise, but it keeps horses honest, if they want to spook.”

“Don’t tip forward, that’s it, remember that little cluck, try not to steer him through your corners, ride him. See how Ben stays absolutely in the middle of the horse, because if you tip out of balance, the horse can duck out.”

 Forward and Waiting

“This is a query I get a lot, as riders get stressy about riding ‘the distance or the take-off spot’. So I normally counter with the question, ‘What distance do you want?’ Up to 1.20m, there are about three distances that the rider can comfortably make work, a forward ride, a normal ride or a waiting one. The important thing is to have a good balanced canter where the horse is always thinking forward, but not necessarily fast, so the minor changes can be made within the pace. Riders often forget that there are normally two pairs of eyes on the fence, (or in my case one and a half pairs!), and the horse, once focused is also trying to find a distance. Then it’s a matter of both horse and rider finding the same one!”

Back to Ben…

“This time be ready to wait. Ben is inclined to take the forward distance because the horse is looky and unconfident, but if you always take that long more comfortable distance, horses start to get flat.”

“Just come the other way and do the five strides, but try and think of that following hand, rather than just chucking the rein at the horse, and if he doesn’t take the rein, don’t give it to him. Don’t throw rein at him because then he is going to go hollow.”

“Do a little more on a circle before you come to the fence, just to get him reaching. The horse is a little rigid in his neck and stiff in his front.”

“Keep your hands above his mouth, a little above his mouth.”

“Do a bit of leg yielding just to get him more between your inside leg and outside rein so that you’ve got a better connection.”

“Land and turn, use your inside leg, inside rein supported by your outside rein to get your horse to make a better of a shape, to follow the rein. I want this horse so that Ben can influence him more, this is a good fence to train a horse over. I’m just worried about the first part of the jump where Ben is throwing the horse rein – okay you give a horse rein in some situations, but what I want this boy to learn about now, is getting the horse following his hand, getting the horse to make a better shape.”

“Let me have a ride, I’m better feeling what the horse is doing…”

“This guy is a typical Thoroughbred, his reactions are quick, with the Thoroughbreds you are always looking to slow the reactions down, whereas with some of the Warmbloods, you are looking to sharpen them up.”

“I never get on a horse without spurs, I never get on a horse without carrying a stick, okay most of the time you don’t need them, but you need to have them there.”

“It doesn’t matter what exercise you are riding, don’t hurry the transitions, take your time, he is a bit quick at the moment, he is a bit fresh. We don’t take the obvious distance, remember there are a bunch of options there, wait for the next distance at a fence like that which is not too big.”

“Keep your hands up above his mouth, atta boy – that’s better, I still saw too much loose rein though.”

“Come on a shorter turn and think about your inside leg, and that there are a bunch of distances.”

“Perhaps we need to set up a grid, to help you get the feel. With a grid you know exactly when the horse is about to leave the ground, I can set it up so Ben doesn’t have to worry about the distances at all, just focus on that following hand. If you jump from that longer distance then the horse gets hollow, whereas from the deeper distance, it is more like the Marcus Ehning jump – they just jump into your hand. It is not that you’ve got to toss them the rein, they take what rein they need and you give them that.”

 

VICKI’S STUDENT: Ben Blay

When did you start riding?

“My parents have always been into horses. My Dad is a racehorse trainer at Gundagai, and my Mum is a vet who did a lot of riding when she was young, so horses were always in the family. I think my first horse experiences were going round the farm with my parents when I was two or three, but I was competing in led classes when I was six.”

“I took a long break, I thought horses weren’t for me, I didn’t want to go out to the farm. But when I was ten or eleven, I started to get jealous of my friend who was getting help from my parents, he wanted to be a jockey and he was riding the horses I was supposed to ride. I thought I want to do this, and that was it…”

Why jumping?

“I think my decision has a lot to do with the horses we had. We had a few really careful jumpers when I was in juniors, when I was about 13 years old, we had horses that were careful enough to go jumping and we didn’t want to wreck them on the cross country. I did do quite a lot of eventing and went to national championships, and pony club championships. I also did a lot of straight dressage as well.”

Was your first George Morris clinic a bit of a shock?

“Definitely. I wasn’t totally unprepared. We had a state pony club camp the week before the George Morris clinic, and the coach there was Jamie Coman. I said, ‘Oh yeah I’m going to this fella called George Morris, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him…’ Jamie’s mouth dropped to the floor, and he said, ‘well we’ll have to improve you before that…’ Jamie helped me a lot in that week, and I think he was the reason that I survived.”

But you survived your first George clinic, and went back in 2011 for another dose…

“Before the first clinic my parents said, this is the man who is teaching all the Olympians and you should have a go. It made me see there was a reason for everything, George Morris gave a reason for everything, so I started to read a few of his books, and I couldn’t wait to get into the next clinic.”

At the second one you were thinking of going overseas, and he suggested that you work with Vicki instead…

“Last year I had just finished year twelve and I wanted to go on an adventure around the world. George said, if you want to progress, you must associate with top professionals. And Vicki said I’ll give him a go for a few weeks. George said, she is a top horsewoman you should go to her. So basically I never left the George Morris clinic, after it finished, I just stayed. After a couple of days, Vicki said, stay as long as you like. I thought I’ll stay for two months, until Sydney Royal, and now it is fourteen months.”

“I’m learning something every day. Vicki has helped me so much and given me a lot of opportunities. She is so generous, letting me ride one of her good horses, Wellsome, that has given me the feel of a good horse. She gave me a lot of opportunities with young horses as well.”

The next step is overseas…

“I trust that Vicki will put me in the right direction, and I’ll trust her idea of where I should go, I’m looking forward to it.”

 

Story: Chris Hector

Our digitally switched on readers have doubtless been enjoying Hayley Coman’s refreshingly frank blog – posted from her new ‘home’, the training stables of Henk Nooren in Belgium. We caught up with the young Australian showjumping rider on a recent visit to Europe, and she tried to explain just what it is like being an Aussie in the middle of a strange country….

“I don’t speak French and no one in this part of Belgium speaks English at all, and they are not the most helpful people, they’d rather just watch you searching in the supermarket than give you a hand. Most people at shows are quite helpful, as soon as they know you are Australian, they want to help you.”

But the strangeness of the location, hasn’t put Hayley off pursuing her dream:

“I always wanted to come to Europe, but I never felt that I was ready. After 2010 when I did my first proper World Cup season – not particularly successfully, I had minor placings in most classes, but I didn’t disgrace myself – I thought that I had learnt enough on the horses I was riding to be able to come over and further my education. Before that I never thought I had enough experience, I had to jump some bigger tracks before I came here.”

“At first I decided to just come over for six weeks to learn and see what it was all about. The first week was really really tough, just a big change in everything I knew – the second week I loved it, I said to Mum and Dad, I’m coming home and I’m selling everything I have and moving back to Europe, because if you want to have a go, this is the right place to be. They offered me a position here, and that was the beginning of it all…”

Although as the daughter of two of Australia’s most successful showjumping riders / trainers, Sue and Jamie Coman, twenty-three-year old Hayley had spent a fair proportion of her life riding and training jumpers, the experience in Belgium came as something of a shock:

“Huge shock riding-wise. Most of my successful horses have been ones that were broken, or difficult or strong, or this or that, because my parents wanted me to be able to ride everything. To come here and sit on horses that are so educated and quiet… the first week I was riding this horse, so easy, snaffle mouthed, beautiful canter, and I said to Henk, ‘I can’t see a distance… The horse is not pulling, it’s not going this way, it’s not going that way, I have no idea what to do!’ Henk said, ‘just trust yourself.’ The first week riding was such a big change from the Thoroughbreds and the difficult horses I have ridden.”

“My main horse at home, my Dad always says, ‘people think he is so easy because he looks like a teddy bear but he really is so tricky in so many ways’, for me he is no problem, but when you come here and you are all of a sudden on these nice horses, I struggled big time.”

Crazy, a struggle because they are so nice…

“Exactly, I said to Dad ‘I just can’t figure this out’ – I thought before I came over here, I can ride a tough horse and I didn’t think I’d find anything particularly difficult to ride, and then there are all these quiet ones! Ones that you need spurs on to ride them up, as opposed to sitting against them. It was a huge change, there were many phone calls, tears, even since I’ve been back this time – crying because I can’t figure out what I am supposed to do, I can’t figure out how to work them, but you’ve just got to relax and then it starts to happen.”

How many riders are working here?

“Just me for Henk’s horses, I ride for his daughter – she’s fourteen. My deal is that I work for them, and I ride their horses, and then on weekends, and when it’s free in summer, I do shows. In Spring and Summer, I might only be here three or four days a week.”

How did you find your horse, Zidane?

“He’s very me. He’s a bit tricky and a bit sensitive, and not everyone can get through to him, but my Dad kept saying to me, these ones suit you. He’s got a big jump but he is different, he’s not a horse that everyone would want to ride because he is not easy, he has his own little ways – but he trusts me, so it is all starting to happen. Over here, because there are so many nice horses, when they are hot or  tricky, they go ‘ah, just a horse’ but this horse is special. He just needs a bit of time.”

At the moment, you are jumping 1.20m classes with him?

“1.20m, 1.30m starting next weekend. I’ve had him just over a month. The first two weeks I stayed home trying to get used to him because I literally tried him twice, bought him – it took two weeks to vet him because I’ve never spent so much money for a horse before. He’d been in a dealing barn so he had no education on the flat. They know how to go, and they know how to look nice, but when you start to change things, they don’t know what to do – so he very much had to go back to basics. But he is very smart and he has a very good attitude, he feels to me like I can jump big classes on him. I need to take my time. It’s not just him, it’s me, I have to get my grip on everything over here and I am not going to do it too quickly, it is going to take time. We’ll stay at a 1.30m for the next couple of months, and then go from there.”

You were saying that even going to the shows was scary…

“Terrifying, terrifying! I was at a show the other day, and you turn up and there’s 250 horse trucks, that’s the Indoor, I can see that, go inside there’s 40 rooms, there’s VIP, there’s more people than I’ve ever seen at a show in Australia and this is just a national show. You have to find the offices, where to pay, what number they are up to. I made the smart decision of becoming friends with the guy on the gate, because he can now tell me when I am on, and how many horses before me. Then you tack up on your truck or your van, which I’ve never done before, so you learn to do that. Then you warm yourself up, with forty odd riders around you, none of whom speak English, but you learn to be ready.”

“The crowd is not big by European standards, but it is certainly more people than I have ever seen, it’s very overwhelming. Then at the practice area, in between classes, you are standing there, trying to have a chat, and there is a really nice horse jumping, and the person helping is standing next to me… ‘That’s a bloody nice horse’ and he like blah blah blah chatting away telling me about the horse. I walk off, then I realise that the person is Jos Lansink. Cool, Jos Lansink, how are you going… nice horse.”

“Then you realize that the riders over here are just people. At home sometimes, the really, really, good riders are treated differently, they have a different attitude. It’s not negative, or positive, just different. Here they are just people and most of them will talk to you. Penelope LePrevost and Kevin Staut, they are two of the world’s most famous riders, members of the French team, and they are based here, and they are just normal people. They come back after a show – how did you go? Well it is either ‘shit’ or ‘really good’, that’s what they say.

 I hear you tried to kick Kevin Staut’s horse out of your stable…

Hayley is laughing:

“For sure, it’s a very uncomfortable moment when you realize that Sylvana is standing in your horse’s box and you are about to tell the groom off, because you wanted to put your horse away, and they’ve but their horse in the wrong stable. Then you think, maybe that’s not a great idea, that is one of the best horses in the world…”

Do you get a chance to watch the French riders train?

“We do. I think because I am a rider – well I groom as well – but because I’m trying to be a rider, they let me watch everything. At the end of June, the whole French team is coming here for a four week training camp in the lead up to the Games, I’m hanging out for that, it will be unbelievable to see them get ready. For them it’s just another show, it’s a big show, but just another show – it’s just the Olympics. I think they think more of the Worlds over here than the Olympics. They’ll be using the dressage coach we’ve got, he’s a Hungarian, Barnabus. He is unbelievable. He is very simple, nothing is over-complicated. I’ve been to dressage lessons with people and they say something, and you have no idea what they are talking about. He picks up on very little things, and they make a huge difference. He is here every week for three days, then he goes to France for three days. That’s another big part of the routine I had to get used to – this dressage training.”

What sort of a trainer is Henk – is he a George Morris who is really directive, or a quieter coach, like your Dad?

“Quieter, very technical. He is a man of very few words. If he says nothing at all, then you know it is good. That’s the thing, he doesn’t praise every correct thing you do but if he is not saying anything, you know you are going okay. He’s got three daughters. He’s a very nice person, and a very smart man. He likes perfection, and he likes people to take it seriously. You might not be a wonderful rider, but if you love it, and you want to do it, he has a lot of respect for that. He has a lot of respect for people who work hard, which I think is why we get along. He’s not a yeller or a screamer. He told me the guy he trained with,– Hans Günter Winkler (Henk Nooren trained in Warendorf with Winkler in 1974 and 1975) – Henk told me, ‘everyone credits this man with making me as a rider, but I hated training with him because all he ever told me was that I was useless, that I couldn’t do things right, he’d yell at me and scream. I was with him for two years, and I had to stick it out, but that is not the sort of trainer I wanted to be, because I don’t know if I actually learnt so much. It was the things he didn’t say, that I learnt things from’. He’s definitely not that sort of trainer, he is very quiet.”

You were saying he likes to vary the work, to get the horses outside the arena…

“Everything is to keep them active. Normally they have a day off after a show, just a walk in the field or they go out and play, they have a lunge at some point during the week, instead of a ride, but not just lunge lunge around in circles, it is a proper lunge. Not tying their heads down, but letting them get soft on their own. We do track work when we can, and interval work to make them really fit. They have small jumping sessions and big jumping sessions, dressage and shows. It varies every day, and depending on the horse, it can vary quite drastically what work they get.”

Do you get lonely, miss your family in Australia?

“Of course I do. There are times when I come into my flat and think, I would give anything just to have someone to talk to right now. People will stay with me, and say, ‘it’s not normal to talk to the television and the nav man’ – I’m like, well I don’t have anyone else to talk to. I just have to make do. I have a very supportive family, we Skype all the time. My Dad calls me at 11 pm their time, every day. Of course I get lonely, but I like to think of it as a stepping-stone to something hopefully better to come. I think there is a misperception. A lot of Australian riders come to Europe but a lot of them don’t stay, and I think the reason for that is that it is really, really hard. It’s really tough. You’ve got to be able to get up every morning at five and finish at seven or eight every night, in minus-fifteen weather. Be told that you are not riding well. Be told that you have to lose ten kilos, everything – you have to be able to say, okay, no worries. Sometimes you just have to be able to get through the day without anyone to talk to. There have been plenty of times I’ve been hysterical on the phone to Dad, saying I want to come home! Then I ring him back half an hour later and say, I’m tougher than that.”

“Going to a show, you don’t just tack up and go to a show. You’ve got to finish work at six at night, you’ve got to drive an hour to collect the van, come back, put all your stuff in the back, all in freezing temperatures, get up the next morning, drive two and a half hours to get to a show, for a minute and a half in the ring, pack up come home, drive the van back, pay the hire, then get up and go to work next day. You’ve just got to be able to do it, and not everyone can handle that.”

You can?

“Of course. There’s plenty of times when you think I’m just not good enough or I don’t know what I am supposed to do, but my parents made me tough and strong and resilient. Ever since I’ve been a kid, because my parents have had quite a prominent role, people always want to say negative things and bring you down. It’s no different coming over here. If I had a dollar for each person who said, ‘you are just not good enough to ride in Europe, you’ll never make it’, I would be very wealthy. People in Australia sometimes don’t want to be positive but I am quite a stubborn individual, I can say, well you are wrong, I’ll be fine. That gets you through the day. Really I just want to ride.”

And if you haven’t had the pleasure of reading Hayley’s regular despatches from Belgium, just go to www.horsemagazine.com – I promise you will enjoy them…

Before Roz and I went to the Games selection trials in France, we enjoyed being part the Oldenburg tour group. We had interesting lectures, saw a sale preview, plus we saw some real live horses in action, and our first stop was the showjumping yard of Danish star, Sören Pedersen. Sören has been an international showjumping rider for over 20 years, competing at the 1999 European Championships on Carlo Colucci – and more recently, enjoying great success with the Landor S son, Lobster.

Sören has a pretty unique set-up. His 40 horses are all owned by a Norwegian lady, Katrin Lund, whose horses all have the prefix, Tailormade, they are all mares or stallions, and none of them are for sale… and despite the fact that there are stallions by stars like Cassini, Darco and Stakkato, they are not breeding stallions, but Sören says eventually the stud might become a breeding station.

Sören’s yard is one of those understated set-ups that says ‘horsemanship’ not ‘ostentation’, and his riding style is a bit like that. Nothing fancy, just tried and true gymnastics, although Sören himself has a distinctive way of using his back and upper body, and perhaps not unexpectedly, his bereiter, Sashia Astrup-Jensen has a similar style.

The first horse Sören showed us had been purchased from Paul Schockemöhle, the six-year-old mare, La Centa, is by Landcap out of a Centauer Z mare, and in the background – those two stallions that were so influential in Schockemöhle’s breeding program, Continue and Sandro. Indeed Ms Lund has obviously been a good customer at PSI, the next, a bay seven-year-old, was by Chacco Blue out of a Baloubet mare.

La Centa was being prepared for a Bundeschampionate qualifier the next day. Sören likes her, ‘she’s very careful, but too stiff, see what you can see in trot, a little stiff in the body.’ The mare has had a break, been worked out in the fields and no jumping. So Sashia works on softening the mare and asking her to relax, working her around the large jumping arena in changes of tempo and pace.

Surprise, surprise, out come the poles and Sashia is trotting then cantering her over them, first two strides, then one. ‘This is work we can do every day without taking it out of the horses, small play without stressing the bodies of the horses’.

Finally they jump several combinations and a course. Sashia’s (and Sören’s) way of using the upper body over the fence looks so flexible and sympathetic to the horse, really encouraging the horse to bascule.

“I don’t take my young horses to many shows. This nice young Cassini II/Singular Joter is not a dressage horse, but loose in the body and an amazing jump”.

“He will go to one or two more shows this year, and no more. For me he is a special horse, not for sale, so why should we work him so much?”

The first time through the grid, the young stallion jumped so enthusiastically over the small jump that Sören added a rail on the other side, which made it easier for his young rider.

“I’ve put that there to encourage him to land and not jump so big and run off.”

“It is important that he stays sound, just two more shows this year – then out in the fields. The same when he is five years old, when he jumps well and everything is going good, then another break – not just going show, show, show. The same when he is six years old, good breaks, two months, for sure we still ride the horses, small dressage work, out in the field, out in the paddock, on the walker, but they will not see a jump. I do a lot of dressage with my horses, I think it is important.”

Not complete breaks from work, where all the muscling is lost.

Next Sören himself is riding a bay stallion, by Quidam’s Rubin out of a Grannus / Weltmeister mare. Quinnus, a seven-year-old, has had four or five weeks with no competitions.

Sören has planned his campaign for the season:

“He competed on grass at Redefin and was really spooky and had two down, then he competed at Hamburg and had the first fence, he looked at a tent and came in too deep. I have made a plan to take him to lots of different places: a show at Klattes, the Danish Youngster Championships, then Poland and Switzerland, five or six shows, but always with a week’s break in between”.

“Dressage and ‘jumping dressage’ are maybe two different things. To me, what I showed you today with two poles on the ground, that is dressage, it is something we can do every day – we don’t need to jump a horse until it gets lame. Do a lot of dressage work, do a lot of working with poles, little things. One day, just go out in the field, you can always ride half pass in the field, that’s dressage, the horse moves away from your leg, and you can do that in the field. Then you are working with them, the horses are happy, you are playing dressage, when you ride down the road, go a little to the right, a little to the left, small dressage work.”

Who influenced your jumping style – did you grow up jumping in Denmark?

“I lived in Denmark for the first 20 years of my life and I have lived over 20 years here in Germany. My father and mother had a small farm with horses. I started to ride when I was 12 years old, with ponies. I won the Danish Jumping Championship two or three times, and then I thought, something has to happen if I want to go more into the sport. Denmark is not so big… I went and worked for two years in Hugo Simon’s place, after that I was very lucky and got a job with a very good rider, Gerd Wiltfang and I was with him for two years. After that, I started my own place.”

What was Wiltfang’s style?

“He had a lot of feeling for horses, he couldn’t tell you it, but he could feel it, and you could learn by watching.”

You stopped the horse before the yellow jump and said, he has to listen to me…

“He has to stay with me so he doesn’t get the wrong distance. I try to give him a good distance so he can jump – he must listen if I want to go forward or wait. I have walked the distance, he hasn’t. It is my job to bring him in the right distance.”

Your rider, Sashia, is a lovely rider, has she been with you long?

“She has been here two and a half years. She is also from Denmark, and I think she is a very good rider. She has a lot of horses that she has started off in the small classes, and now they are ready to step up.”

Do you have any Grand Prix horses at the moment?

“I have two Grand Prix horses, Tailor Made Esperanto de Revel, and Tailor Made Cavetta – two Grand Prix horses and Sashia has one Grand Prix horse.”

“We take riders for training but they have to come with their horses and stay for a longer time. We have one Danish girl who has been here for a year with two or three horses. Last year we had a girl from Prague with five horses, we had an Indonesian girl with six horses. We train with them and manage the competitions, everything.”

You are very lucky that your horses are not for sale, most jumping riders are always nervous their horse will be sold…

“At the moment I hope my horses stay for a long. We have a very good sponsorship, and it is a very lucky situation that most riders don’t have.”

Just a week or so after we visited, Sören won the Danish Showjumping Championship on Cavetta (Careful / Grannus)…