Chris decided he wanted to go somewhere different this autumn, and well we did, but I’m not sure we wanted it quite so different.

The showjumping was great, but the rest, not sure I will reserve my judgement until after the dressage this week end.

When we arrived at the equestrian park, our resident friend, Kenneth Braddick, partner of long term Horse Magazine friend, Ilse Schwarz, showed us around the amazing grounds. There’s a map in the story in the magazine in May, fantastic, we said as we rounded every corner to come to another arena of amateurs, or ponies or hunters, punctuated with trade stands, bars and food stands. We pushed our way through the crowds of doting parents and husbands armed with cameras, dealers on their phones, ‘yes, I have just the one for your daughter/son/wife’.

Then Kenneth suggested a drive to Grand Prix Drive, OK we said, having no idea what he was talking about.

We exit the grounds in our golf cart, alongside a beautiful hedge lined horse track, and there we are in a housing estate, with lovely houses, of various themes, but lots of Spanish influence. All surrounded by beautiful grassed horse yards, perfect arenas with better decorated jumps than we have at lots of shows, and every facility you could want. Wrong, Kenneth tells us. These are not houses, they are stables, and the whole estate is only for stables, maybe one groom is allowed to stay on a farm, but the estate is only for horses! And it goes for miles, all connected to the horse park by beautiful riding tracks!

Not  houses, these are stables!!

Next day we caught up with Matt Williams, well it was easy really as he still has two weeks to go on crutches. He really likes the Guidam stallion, Lansdowne, ridden by Conor Swail, for Ireland. You can see why when you see the way he jumped in the big class on Saturday night.

Another star on Saturday night was Brit Ben Maher, who now rides for Jane Clarke, after the US federation took the amazing move of banning her horse and American rider. Controversial, and a crazy way to treat one of their best long term supporters. Lucky Ben is now coached by the recently retired US coach, George Morris, and still riding under the Union Jack.

The winner of the $500,000 class was another new Morris pupil, Alvaro De Miranda, riding the Baloubet son, Bogeno. Doda is known to Australians as the buyer of Drossel Dan.

Third in the class was his wife, also a Morris pupil, Athina Onassis De Miranda and Camille Z. It said unknown breeding for the mare in the start list, but Chris has looked it up and it’s in the story in the magazine.

Another rider of interest was Jessica Springstein with her wonderful Vindicat W, maybe going even better for her than he did for Peter Charles at Greenwich. We met Laura Kraut, her trainer, who says she is a talented and dedicated rider and certainly no princess.

Thaisa Erwin was another Aussie we caught up with, here she is with her WEG hopeful, Matilda. They looked classy and we will have an up-date with her.

More on Florida in the May issue of The Horse Magazine

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.”

The WBFSH stallion rankings are never what you’d call breaking news, year after year, the lists are pretty much the same. Seemingly forever, the jumping standings have been headed by the late, and very great, Darco – and indeed about half the top ten spots are held by horses gone to the great breeding barn in the sky, with a couple more who might as well be there since they can no longer produce foals.
The 2011 standings are more of the same; Darco is still in the lead, but slowly, slowly, places are changing. Quidam de Revel has slipped from his usual number two spot to sixth place, and given that he is now only marginally fertile, unless the WBFSH decides to add his clone’s offspring to the total, he will continue his downward slide. The big movers are Baloubet de Rouet, up from 19th in 2009 to second place, and Kannan, who didn’t even feature in the top 30 in 2009, up to fifth spot.
The move has generated its share of just who is Kannan? posts, which suggests that for all French breeding has become wide open to blood from the rest of Europe, the French scene is still a little out of the breeding loop of the Sporthorse cognoscenti.

Born 1992, Kannan was purchased by Frenchman Michel Hécart for a record price from Belgium in 2000, and by the time he featured on the front cover of the Annuaire du Cheval de Sport et d’Élevage 2002, he was the hot new sire. Kannan had covered 270 mares in the 2001 season at a fee of 8,000 french francs and was already showing a profit, with expectations that 2002 would prove even better…

Five years later, Kannan was still ranking highly, the 11th most used stallion for 2006 season, with 182 mares, but after he was purchased by the GFE breeders group a year ago, his career re-booted, and he is believed to have covered 500 mares last season, and daily his total of international jumpers grows.

The Voltaire son out of a Nimmerdor mare, is an interesting genetic mix – branded KWPN, he balances 6/16ths French (from Furioso II and his full-brother’s son, Le Mexico), 6/16ths solid German – Gotthard and Farn, along with a touch of Thoroughbred, and a dash of traditional Dutch, Gelderlander.

It is one of those ironic breeding twists that the stallion line of the great French Thoroughbred Furioso has died out in that country, and has only recently been revived, first through the Furioso grand-son, Voltaire, and more recently by the Voltaire son, Kannan.

Kannan had a successful competition career, winning the Belgian Classic Circuit at the age of six in 1998 and seven-year-old Belgian Championship in 1999. In 2000 he made his International debut by finishing 5th in a Grand Prix. In 2003 Kannan won the Deauville Grand Prix and in 2004 he won at Paris Bercy and Jardy. Kannan was a regular member of the French team, which won the Samsung Super League in 2003 and 2004. In 2005 he was French National Champion.

By 2007 Kannan was already a dominating force at the Young Horse Jumping Championships at Fontainebleau. The five-year-old class featured 30 of his progeny while the best-of-the-rest, Quick Star had 11, and Quidam de Revel, 10. However it was quickly pointed out that, there were some 170 Kannan foals of that vintage, so the ratio of success – 17.6% – put him into 5th place on the rankings adjusted for numbers – behind Darco at No 1 (5 out of 25 – 20%), Diamant de Sémilly (9/48 – 18.7%), Baloubet de Rouet (3/16 – 18.7%) and Lando, a Belgian Warmblood by Lancier (5/27 – 18.5%).

At the 2011 Great Week in Fontainebleau last August, the Seven year old Criterium was a triumph for Kannan since he put two horses into the final, a feat equalled only by the recently deceased, Quick Star, who was the sire of the Champion, Quatrin de la Roque, out of a Belgian bred mare by Kannan.

Kannan was also responsible for two of the 12 finalists in the seven-year-old final. In the six-year-old class, Kannan was the sire of one finalist and dam sire of another.

Watching from the sidelines, GFE head, Arnaud Evain was well pleased with his front-liner, but he predicted more, much more:

“Every day there is a new Kannan showing up in the international results. When we bought Kannan a year ago, he had 120 international jumpers, and this morning it was 217. It is like a mushroom growing.”

Why is he such a successful sire?

“If you look at Kannan, he is not very represented in the four-year-old championship, but he is the largest represented in the seven-year-old, because the Kannans are scopey, careful and with a very good brain. There are a lot of riders participating in this week, and many of them are not great experts and the horses have to participate, and Kannans, like the Mr Blues, they have the brain of going through and doing their best and being clear. That’s why you see so many of them when it starts to get serious.”

Kannan’s fifth place on the world rankings was thanks to a total of 7354 points, accumulated by 74 international competitors. Baldo DS (out of a Darco mare) contributed 420 points with 1.50m class wins in Hamburg and Valencia for Manuel Anon Suarez. Quintera (Quick Star) had 394 points with 1.45m wins at Chernyakhovsk CSI**** with Jaroslaw Skrzyczynski while Van Meever S Sybalia VM (Hattrick) notched up four 1.45m wins for Frederik Cattebeke.

Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum’s former ride, Kismet (Furioso II) had a solid season that included a 3rd in the 1.60m class at Paris CSI*****, and Bridgit (Pion) and Bernardo Alves Resende also did their bit, contributing 365 points to Kannan’s total.

Kismet with his new rider, Ray Texel, photo by Ken Braddick 2012/Dressage-news.com

Like they say, the best is yet to come…

Matt Williams has won the $8,000 G&C Farm 1.45m Jumpers Class in the second week of the FTI Winter Equestrian Festival. Matt won the class on his 11-year-old Belgian Warmblood, Bolero van’t Heike. The 2012 FTI Winter Equestrian Festival is a 12 week competition that concludes on April 1, 2012, with more $6 million in prize money on offer throughout the circuit.

The 1.45m class was designed by Luc Musette from Belgium and had 26 entries. Matt, who was listed only this week on Australia’s Olympic Shadow Squad, rode the fastest of the seven clear rounds, finishing in 67.081 seconds. He only just held off second-place getter Daniel Bluman from Colombia riding Fatalis Fatum who finished in 67.381 seconds. Third place went to Irishman Cian O’Connor who rode Sinead and Oonagh Kennedy’s Alligator Alley in 67.843.

Matt, who originally hails from Melbourne and is now based in Florida, only regained the ride on the horse two weeks ago after the horse was with another rider for the year. They had previously competed together in Europe in two Nations Cup events when Matt was living in Switzerland.

“He had been with another rider for the last year,” Matt told Equestrian Sport Productions, “with London coming up, we got offered the horse for the season to see how he goes. I’ve got two horses that I’m preparing, and hopefully one of them will be good enough.”

“He [Bolero van't Heike] is quite a strong horse, but he’s very careful and very brave. I rode him last week in the grand prix, and he was a little different than he was in Europe. He’s changed a little bit. I wanted to give him a little faster round today to get him back into the routine of how I ride him. It paid off.”

Matt is planning to compete for Australia in upcoming FEI Nations Cup in March. Good luck!

Photo Credits: Sportfot, Official Sport Photographer of the FTI Winter Equestrian Festival

Analysis – Christopher Hector

Photos – Roz Neave, Jacob Melissen & Kit Houghton/FEI

No doubt some manic statistician is hard at work right now coming up with a formula that will prove that the KWPN is not in fact the leading studbook in both showjumping and dressage but it just won’t wash. In fact, never in the history of the WBFSH’s World Rankings has the top studbook’s teams been so absolutely packed with super stars. Take a look at the six Dutch dressage horses: Jerich Parzival, Totilas, Uthopia, Watermill Scandic HBC, Valegro and Ravel. International stars every one of them. It’s the same when you look at the Jumping lineup: BMC Van Grunsven Simon, Hickstead, Taloubet Z, Silvana de Hus, Chaman and Star Power. It is no surprise that both the KWPN dressage and showjumping  points totals were almost 3,000 points in front of the studbooks in second place.

Jerich Parzival

Totilas

Uthopia

Scandic

Valegro

Ravel

Interestingly only one of the Dutch dressage six, Scandic, is by an ‘outsider’, he was the product of imported semen from the Swedish stallion, Solos Carex and out of a mare by another Swede, Amiral. Gribaldi, sire of Totilas, was born in Germany, but purchased at the Trakehner licensing when he was two, and he spent all his active breeding career in Holland. The rest are all of a distinctly orange hue…

The Dutch showjumping representatives are a more polyglot collection. Simon and Hickstead are numbers one and two in the world, the only two competitors to have amassed more than 2000 points in the season. Simon is by Mr Blue, by the Dutch sire, Couperus, out of a mare by Oldenburg, from… Oldenburg and by the French Anglo Arab, Inschallah. Simon is out of a mare of solid Westfalien breeding with two crosses of Pilatus, through Polydor and Pilot. He is what my friend Arnaud Evain would call a ‘bastard’. Hickstead is solidly Dutch – all those names that made the modern Dutch jumper: Nimmerdor, Courville, Lucky Boy xx, Joost and Le Mexico.

The late Hickstead with Eric Lamaze

Taloubet Z is another cross, by the great French sire, Galoubet out of a Westfalien mare by Polydor. Silvana de Hus was born in Holland but his sire, Corland (by Cor de la Bryère) is solidly Holsteiner, and his dam is 25% Selle Français, 25% Westfalien (Pilatus again). Chaman is largely French – by Baloubet du Rouet, out of a mare by I Love You, so a double cross of Almé. Star Power is by another Almé son, Quick Star, out of a mare by an influential Selle Français imported to Holland, Calvados (Uriel / Ibrahim). Together they amassed 10,370 points in the 2011 season.

Taloubet Z, photo by Kit Houghton/FEI

I guess the French can also claim a large share of the credit for the success of the studbook in second place, Holstein, since all six of their representatives have at least one cross of the Selle Français foundation sire, Cor de la Bryère, combined in the usual mix with the two other pillars of Holstein breeding, Capitol and Landgraf. Their total was 7,717.

In a nicely ironic touch, the French contingent in third place, is headed by Kellemoi de Pepita, by Voltaire, the Hanoverian branded son of the Selle Français, Furioso II, out of a mare by Gotthard, who found his home in Holland when the Germans didn’t want him. The mare is out of a granddaughter of Almé. There is another ‘foreigner’ in the French sextet, Mylord Carthago, by the Holsteiner Carthago, but out of a granddaughter of Almé. The rest – Cevo Itot du Chateau, Lord de Theize, Quick Study and AD Norsen – are as French as croissants and coffee for breakfast, and three of the four carry the blood of Almé. Total 7,011.

Mylord Carthago

Last year, the WBFSH standings were challenged by a calculation that measured success in terms of the proportion of horses born in the respective studbooks, and came up with a new table headed by Studbook Zangersheide. I guess much the same will happen this year, since Zangersheide languishes at number 10 on the official standings – but it really is a bit rich to claim that a studbook is the best in the world when its most successful representative, Regina Z (by Rex Z, the incestuous product of the union of Rebel 1 Z and Ratina Z) has as her best performance a Speed class win at La Coruna against a pretty lacklustre field… The six best Z representatives accumulated 4,000 points. The question is, are you aiming to breed handy 1.45m/speed class horses, or the best of the best?

For the record, the Belgian BWP studbook was fourth with 6,751, the Hanoverians, fifth with 4,844, the Anglo European Studbook, sixth (4,634), the Westfalens, seventh (4,193), the Oldenburgers, eighth (4,172) and the Irish Sporthorses, ninth (4,060).

The Dutch and the Hanoverians were once head-to-head for the number one spot on the Dressage Rankings, but now the Dutch have streaked ahead, with six horses all of whom have fabulous performances at the very top events for a total of 14,249, and the Hanoverians languish way behind on 11,390 with half the total thanks to efforts of the redoubtable Isabell Werth. Heading the Werth/Hanoverian team is the Weltmeyer son, Warum Nicht FRH (a horse that never quite made it) followed by the Sao Paulo son, Satchmo (now semi-retired) – Isabell’s other contributor is the fifth-ranked Don Johnson (Don Frederico), a nine-year-old going well in young Grand Prix horse classes. Her ride of choice at the Europeans was the Westfalien gelding, El Santo.

Warum Nicht FRH

The six are rounded out by Laura Becthtolsheimer’s Andretti (by the Thoroughbred, Aarking), the recent winner of the Swedish national title, Don Auriello (Don Davidoff), and the young rider star, D’Agostino (De Niro). Interestingly, half of the six are descended from that famous Oldenburger, Donnerhall and bitter rival to Hanoverian hero, Weltmeyer. Only Warum Nicht and Satchmo scored more than 2000 points in the season, while five of the Dutch six, topped the 2000 barrier.

D'Agostino

It’s much the same for the third-placed Danes. Only two of the six are genuine stars, Mistral Hojris (2,492 points) and Digby (2,145). Fourth, Oldenburg (10,399), fifth, Westfalia (10,110), sixth, Rheinland (9,171).

Mistral Hojris

There has been something of a turnaround on the Eventing Standings. From 2004 to 2009, the Irish Sport Horse studbook took first place. In 2010 they were displaced by the Hanoverians, and on these latest rankings, they have dropped to third behind the Hanoverians, with the Selle Français heading the list. Six years after his death, the most successful eventing stallion is once again the Czech Thoroughbred Heraldik with a staggering 39 progeny winning 1,093 points in the season. The Irish Thoroughbred, Master Imp, who died in 2009 at the age of 22, is not far behind with 34 progeny and 909 points. The showjumping star, Cruising, comes in third, with 20 offspring and 770 points.

Jazz once again heads the Dressage Stallion rankings with 20 progeny and 19,848 points. His most successful competitor is world number one, Jerich Parzival with 2,735 points, but his second-highest point scorer, IPS Tango (out of a Contango mare) is the up-and-comer – the stallion recently won the first World Cup qualifier of the Western European circuit, with 79.3%, and while there are a number of exciting stallion sons of Jazz, perhaps Tango is his successor? Certainly the reports on his progeny are encouraging…

In second place is the great Westfalen stallion, Florestan. Here was a stallion who was perhaps regarded more as a dependable sire of pleasant all-rounders than a sire of Grand Prix stars, but as the head of the Westfalen Stud in Warendorf, Susanne Schmitt-Rimkus told me recently, it was a matter of the breeders finding the right cross:

“I think what has happened is that the breeders have learnt how to breed with Florestan. The breeders who had good mares with a high potential for sport, but maybe a bit hot, they took Florestan, and planned a horse like this. So we have a lot of F line horses that have a bit hot mother lines, and then this F blood, can make very good sport horses.”

Third place to Gribaldi; most of his points have come from Totilas, who has slipped to world number three with 2,471 points for the season – with Carl Hester and Uthopia breathing down their neck on 2,466…

Uthopia’s grand-sire, Ferro, is in fourth place, followed by Michelino, sire of world number two Mistral Hojris. Sixth to De Niro and seventh to his sire, Donnerhall with Rohdiamant, eighth (but is his son, Blue Hors Romanov about to amaze us all with his new rider, Edward Gal?). Ninth to the Weltmeyer son, Welt Hit II, with Breitling rounding out the top ten, with four of his five points winners all out of one mare, Devisa, by the Thoroughbred, Diego.

It is way, way harder to make the top ten standings on the Jumping Stallions rankings. While the top ten dressage stallions have one, maybe two, standout progeny, the top ten jumping stallions really produce both quantity and quality.

Take Darco. His most successful product is Coriana van Klapschuet (Heartbreaker) who blitzed them in the 2011 season, winning with Eric Lemaze at Calgary, Rotterdam, La Baule and Valencia. Then winning the Moorsele Grand Prix with Pilar Lucrecia Cordon Muro in the saddle when Eric was otherwise occupied in the lead-up to the Pan American Games, where Lamaze rode her into 11th place. Total 1,163 points

But there’s more Darcos. Just ten points behind is the grey stallion, Winningmood, who carried the Portuguese rider, Luciana Diniz to wins at the five star CSIs of Lyon and Vigo, along with a heart-stopping second in the Grand Prix of Aachen, and a ninth at the Euro Champs. In third is the Belgian gelding, Wisconsin with Sergio Alvarez Moya, they won at Gijon, Aachen and Hamburg. Fourth is Amaretto d’Arco, a Nations Cup star for the Irish rider Shane Sweetnam, then there’s Edwina Alexander’s Cevo Socrates, and McLain Ward’s Sapphire… see what I mean, no dressage stallion has produced a line up of international performers like that.

Now, in the past, reviewing the Jumping Stallion rankings has been a little like watching grass grow – there is not much movement. Traditionally, Darco is followed by Quidam de Revel, but not this year. Baloubet de Rouet, who initially received something of a bad press from the breeding fraternity, is producing the goods and has ousted his cousin from number two with an impressive team of frontliners. His most successful product in the 2011 season is Chaman (I Love You – that’s a double cross of Almé) who carried Ludger Beerbaum to victory at San Patrigano. The stallion was started by Luciana Diniz.

Chaman, photo by Jacob Melissen

Baloubet’s next most successful representative is Napoli du Ry (Silvio I) ridden by Frenchman Simon Delestre and a 1.50m winner at Basel five star. In all, Baloubet produced 50 international competitors in the season.

Third to the late great Quick Star (Almé again). His most successful representative was Ian Millar’s Star Power (Calvados), consistent but no world beater, with Lauren Hough’s Quick Study (What a Joy xx) the only other Quick Star to top the 1,000 points mark. In fourth place, another of the traditional top-ten line up, Carthago. His best representative was Cash 63 (Lavall II) absolute star with Marco Kutscher. The pair were members of the winning Nations Cup team at Falsterbo, and fourth at the 2011 World Cup Final. His next best representative is the French frontliner, Mylord Cathago*HN (Jalisco B), seventh at the Euro Champs in Madrid, second at La Baule, with Penelope Leprevost.

Fifth to another ‘shooter’ Kannan, who didn’t even make the top 30 on the 2009 rankings. The stallion’s career has had a second lease of life following his purchase by the GFE group of stallion owners in 2010, and he is reported to have covered 500 mares last season, a season in which his number of international representatives grew from 120 to 217, although it should be noted that as his progeny have only recently broken through, their individual points totals are somewhat lower than the established superstars. Kannan’s 74 international competitors amassed a total of 7,354 points. The most successful, Baldo DS (out of a Darco mare) contributed 420 points with 1.50m class wins in Hamburg and Valencia for Manuel Anon Suarez. Quintera (Quick Star) had 394 points with 1.45m wins at Chernyakhovsk CSI**** with Jaroslaw Skrzyczynski while Van Meever S Sybalia VM (Hattrick) notched up four 1.45m wins for Frederik Cattebeke.

Quidam de Revel slipped to sixth with 6,990 points, the best total coming from AD Norson (Grand Veneur), ridden by Brazilian Alvaro Alfonso de Miranda Neto – a moderate performer, the chestnut accumulated 888 points in the season.

The Nimmerdor son, Heartbreaker is in seventh spot with 6,674 points – his most successful son, Action-Breaker (Lys de Darmen) was second in the Grand Prix of Cannes with Sergio Alvarez Moya. The Belgian stallion is also proving a more than useful sire and might well find a place in the WBFSH top ten, but remember these things happen gradually.

Mr Blue is a classic example of a stallion initially shunned by his studbook, only to be lauded later in life. Only licensed after he became a competition star, Mr Blue was honoured with the Predicate title at the 2011 KWPN stallion show, five years after he died in France where he spent most of his breeding career. His top performer is another absolute star, BMC van Grunsven Simon, who led the Dutch to victory in the Nations Cup at Aachen this year with a superb double clear, and finish third in the 2011 World Cup final. The gelding has recently been sold to Beezie Madden. Other stars by Mr Blue include VDL Groep Sapphire B (Grand Veneur) and Plot Blue (Pilot).

Nabab de Reve holds down ninth spot, largely thanks to his son, Vigo d’Arsouilles (Fleuri du Manoir), although the exciting chestnut stallion did not have quite the defining moment he enjoyed at Lexington last year, a pair of seconds at Rome and La Baule are nothing to sneeze at.

Vigo D'Arsouilles

Rounding out the top ten is Caretino, one of the sadly far-too-large roster of great stallions that died this year, but in his best performer of the season, Casall La Silla (Lavall I), he has a worthy successor. Partnered by Rolf-Göran Bengstsson, the stallion notched up wins at Montecarlo, Hamburg and Göteborg. Another Caretino with more than 1,000 points from the season, is Cristallo (Cicero), a solid performer on the US circuit with Richard Spooner.

It really is a measure of how consolidated jumping horse breeding is, that by the time we get to number ten on the dressage stallions list, we are talking about the performances of five competitors, whereas the list of really top jumping sires, with lots of competitors goes on and on: 11th – Voltaire (31 representatives, 4,593 points), 12th – Numero Uno (26 – 4,485), 13th – Clinton (32 – 4,450), 14th – Concorde (29 – 4446), 15th – Contender (27 – 3995), 16th – Andiamo (40 -3,964), 17th – Lux (30 – 3,951), 18th – Guidam (21 – 3,749), 19th – Cruising (17 – 3,634) and 20th Kashmir van Schuttershof (29 – 3,601). There are really fifty stallions on the rankings, all of which have enjoyed serious success in the season. I suppose it just shows that sporthorse breeders have been breeding for jumping talent a lot longer than either the dressage or eventing breeders… or is it just that they are cleverer breeders with a bigger – richer – market? Or is jumping simply a more heritable trait than dressage…

Story by Chris Hector

Photos by Roz Neave

One of the reasons I like working with Jamie Coman is that his whole operation is so quietly professional. The stables are neat, the horses look wonderful, the tack is clean, and the training, progressive and logical. It was even better to find that the equine subject for the day’s lesson was a really exciting young stallion, Noblewood Beretta. The bay is a big, big horse, and still has a long way to go in terms of physical maturity but he is a lovely mover with a brilliant technique over a jump.

Jamie was, not surprisingly, enthusiastic about the horse:

“Noblewood Park Beretta is a six-year-old, by Burggraaf, out of Noblewood Park Cantara, that’s Cantas line which is a line the Germans really like. He’s been with me for nearly one year. He has only four or five points in D grade, he’s just done double cleans. We’ve brought him along really slowly because he is a big horse and he needs time. He is extremely careful, and very trainable and rideable.”

Jamie had started the working session with the sort of dressage routine we’ve come to expect from good jumping rider/trainers…

You started him off with a few lateral exercises, is that how you normally work your horses?

“Once they accept your leg, I like those sort of exercises. With him being so big, and I am quite small, I really need to have him very rideable and adjustable – I do a lot of that with him, but I do a lot of those exercises with all my horses. I teach them to move off the leg – it might not be perfect, but it is as correct as I can make it.”

And the poles…

“They are mostly for me, to strengthen my upper body, to get me better, stronger through my core, to improve my connection. Through the poles, I stay tall with my eyes up, and then I get the elevation from the horse as well, he learns that he can be active and still stay contained. It is an exercise for him, but more so for me.”

With a big horse like him, it must be a challenge getting him muscle toned and fit…

“Those horses have big engines but there’s a mass of weight to carry and you have to have them super fit. I understand that well from having the Zazu horse that took me to the Sydney Games – even though he was a Thoroughbred, he was a massive horse. I like to have them super fit, if I can get them to a racetrack and just do slow gallop work – it’s fast for them – that is really good. It’s also good for them to go to a different environment, freshen up, and keep them happy with what you are doing with them, not just always schooling and drilling on the flat.”

You were saying when you started popping Beretta over the jumps that you liked to go off a very short turn to get him bouncy going into the jump…

“Very active, I don’t want to give him any reason to get long and flat in his canter. I want him always active from behind, starting to flow, and staying airy. The more active I can have the canter, the airier I can get the jump.”

Was he always that careful?

“Very. He has been a very careful horse all the way through, that’s why we’ve taken him slow. He is very watchful, he very rarely has a fence down – if he does it’s greenness or fatigue, he still gets a little tired, but he has always been extremely careful.”

You’ve ridden Burggraafs before?

“I rode a couple when I was in Europe at Henk Noren’s but nothing that looks as much like his sire as this one, he pretty much mirrors Burggraaf, he is very similar in the way he goes, but better in the mouth and more rideable. Burggraaf was quite a fierce going horse, but I haven’t ridden a horse like this for quite a while.”

He is extraordinarily flexible in his joints, is that natural or a result of the work?

“A bit of both. In my sit trot work, I want them nearly passaging. I’m not perfect at producing passage and I never will be, but I know what I want from my ride, and I want that real engagement and suspension. It does make them more supple through their joints. I use that elevated trotting exercise with the eventers I help – on the last day before the showjumping, because I need to get them slow and back in the air again. I get my eventing riders to do that exercise and it really gets them back and elevated again, because we can’t use our walking exercise any more, it is illegal. I need an exercise where I can still keep the rider and the horse slow and let them find out where their legs are again.”

With a horse like Beretta, you like to finish with a little circuit of jumps…

“I like to start with my flatting, then mix it with some jumping and if the jumping stays good, then finish on that. Otherwise, I’ll go back and finish on the flat again, making him sit, making him train again – so he is light, I want Sue or Hayley to be able to get on and ride him and know he is very light for them, he is not ever going to be heavy.”

How many days a week would you work a youngster like that?

“He gets five days a week, first day back after two days off, he’ll have just walking on the roads, then the next day he starts his program up to the Friday. Obviously if there is a show on the Saturday, we will take him. I am hoping to get him on the new Young Showjumping Horse squad that is starting, it’s like a talent squad, I’ll work towards getting him on that. This season he will just be jumping his D grades, 1.20 to 1.25. I don’t think I’ll be stepping him up to Futurities this year, I’d rather repeat the year just gone, his progress has been just great and we’ve got time enough, he’s a six-year-old, I don’t want him until he is a ten-year-old, he’s not going to be ready until then. My program is just to keep everything as accurate as I can, and to keep him happy to jump.”

He has bred mares, and it doesn’t seem to have affected his attitude…

“Obviously springtime comes and he is a little more full of himself, but you only have to growl at him a little, and he is very good again. He is very easy to handle… maybe that is because he actually ran with mares and he understands what mares are in season, but he knows when he works, it is work. When I take him to a competition, he is no problem at all. Obviously we have to have the green tag and someone there at the truck, but he is very, very good.”

That really big jump with the classy hind end, can you teach them that or are they born with it?

“I am sure a lot of it is natural, but a lot is your training too. A lot is creating a good canter, creating a canter that is active through the hocks. A lot is just making them feel light off the floor – and a lot of flatting can help. Just watching the European riders, their preparation is not all about jumping big fences, it is about the work on the flat, how rideable they have their horses. It is amazing their training. Look at Chris Chugg and Vivant, the better Chris got his dressage, the better the horse went. And the proof of the pudding is how rideable the horse is, even with another rider it is going on.”

Do you have the ride on this horse for long enough to have a crack at the big time with him?

“Yes, his owner, Robynne McTaggart, is a wonderful owner and she has given me the reins, you take your time with this horse. They just want to collect from him for the stud, but he lives here with me all the time, and that should be a nice long time.”

Australian showjumping has suffered of late with a series of high profile sales, hopefully Jamie and Beretta will be part of a revival and in the meantime, it is going to be fascinating to watch the new partnership develop.

PS

Congratulations to Jamie and Noblewood Park Beretta on their win at the 2011 Australian Showjumping Championships in the D Grade Point Score!

Last month, we followed the story of Vicki’s showjumping career all the way to her historic victory with Apache at the Grand Prix of Rome, but after the triumph came sadness, Apache was sold, and Vicki was once more looking for a horse:

“There weren’t many horses available, and after I’d sold Apache I had a bit of cash. I was being sponsored by Ranvet and I wanted something to ride. Mickey Mouse was available. He wasn’t what I thought was the perfect horse. He was okay. Michelle Strapp did such a wonderful job on that horse, because he wasn’t the scopiest thing on the planet, but she had brought him along so carefully and trained him so well – I’m in awe of what a good trainer she is, because this horse, even though he was really a 1.40m horse, he thought he could jump 1.60m. No one had told him different. So for the time that I had him, he’d climb over 1.60m and he was very careful. He was a wonderful horse because Michelle had never pushed him, never scared him.”

“He has probably been one of my most successful horses with the least amount of talent. He took me to the 1988 Games, and he was a counting score in our Nations Cup team. In those times, they took five, and Stan Fear, the chef, wanted everyone to have a go, so he left me out of the individual competition.”

You made up for that two years later at the first WEG in Stockholm?

“He was green in Seoul, poor little guy it was tough on him. In Stockholm, he was okay in the lead ups, but when he finished up ninth there, that was a real shock; he was just in a good zone at Stockholm. He did climb over some fences. I think in the first round he kicked out at an oxer and kicked out nearly all the rails except the top rails. He just got better and better. It was a big open ring so I could get at fences, he could hunt down to them at three-quarter pace, and he was careful enough.”

Is that something about you as a rider – that you do seem to go that much better at the really big shows…?

“It’s such a privilege to ride into some of those big arenas, that’s what I really enjoyed – but I think quite a lot of riders get nervous and can’t perform to their best ability. At Aachen, or Stockholm, or Hickstead, any of those fabulous arenas, it is such a privilege to be there, it does lift you.”

But you must have a good head for competition?

“In those days, I’m sure it is not as good now.”

You don’t get nervous?

“Sure everyone gets nervous, of course you get nervous, but that’s what Wayne taught me to deal with very early and that is what he is very good at – a little like George in that respect – he can bring the best out in you. Wayne was always very good for my head, he would make me mentally very strong. He taught me that you make your nerves work for you, so that you learn to focus and challenge your energies into producing the best performance you can, rather than letting your nerves destroy you, which does happen with a lot of people. I wasn’t a very tough person mentally, he made me tougher. I’m eternally grateful for that, and for the attention to detail.”

The next major horse was Coalminer?

“He was a wonderful  horse. He was originally produced in Western Australia, by Shaun Squire, and I think he won a World Cup on him… then Gavin Chester got the horse and won a World Cup with him. The horse was on the market and we bought him. He was wonderful, I think he might still hold the record for consecutive World Cups. He has probably been my most successful horse, just in the amount of things he has won. He won in Europe, he went to South America and won a car in a Grand Prix that Leopoldo (Palacios) built…”

Vicki and Coalminer

“He was very scopey, very good technique, careful enough and a good brain – he was trainable. This is where the flatwork was terribly important, because he had a canter that was twenty feet long and very strung out, like a camel. Riding him downhill felt dreadful, but once you learnt to compact his canter, he was unbelievable, because then he could do anything.”

He was straight Thoroughbred: that was back in the days when you used the word ‘dumb blood’ dismissively…

“I’d still love to get a Thoroughbred, but they are just not around. To find another Apache – my god! There are plenty of little scrawny hot things around but they don’t jump like him. Coalminer was a wonderful Thoroughbred, but at the end of the day, the Thoroughbreds just aren’t careful enough.”

When did you first start to get involved with Warmbloods?

“Luna Luna. After Coalminer, there was Liaisons that I bought from Gill Rolton, and that is how I got Errol (Premier des Hayettes) because I swapped him as part of the deal. Luna I bought as a five or six-year-old… but the thing about Warmbloods now is that they are seventy per cent Thoroughbred. The Europeans got smart with that, they still won’t tell you, but when you go to the Holstein Verband, there are six Thoroughbred stallions there. You really go for anything that jumps. Nothing else matters, not their colour – not even if they are coloured, like Visage, who I think is a wonderful jumper, he might have lacked what they call ‘the last scope’ but to me his attitude was so wonderful.”

Did you have to adjust much when you started to ride Luna?

“No, I still haven’t stopped learning, but I think the basic flat knowledge was always there. With Coalminer I had to do a whole lot with his flatwork and canter to make him a more competitive jumper – Gavin was such a genius that he could adjust to the horse, and with that horse, he’d just cut out strides all over the place, and it wasn’t a problem. I couldn’t do that, the horse had to be adjusted to my way of riding, but I think in the end, I made a better horse of him. The main problem with Luna was that she was just difficult. She was headstrong. When I first brought her out here, I had to fix her spookiness problems, I had to take her up the drive and ride her round the road. The first day, to get her out of the driveway – 150 metres long – took me, 40 minutes. She was very difficult, it wasn’t because she was a pig, she was genuinely frightened, she was quite a sensitive soul in this big, heavy body. She was a project, but a fabulous jumper and she ended up a great horse. I wish I could have kept her, but the finances were a bit tight.”

Luna Luna – the first Warmblood

“Now my horses are all Warmbloods, and the last crop I got from Europe. The bay one I bought is a lovely horse, he is like a Thoroughbred – Cachet by Canute. He’s only eight. Casino Royale, the little stallion of Robyn’s, that she bought as a three-year-old, George Morris thinks he’ll be a real 1.60m horse, and he is just delightful, I love him. He really didn’t fit that European system because he is a very careful, quality, sensitive horse and he needs an accurate ride. In Europe they have a bunch of riders and all of them are not necessarily great riders, that doesn’t suit some horses. The horse was genuinely scared when I started to ride him, now he is wonderful. He likes it out here in Australia. He likes his paddock.”

Kartoon de Breve

“The Kartoon horse, because my budget is limited, is a repair job but he is coming good. I’m quite happy with what I’ve got now.”

There was a time when George Morris stopped coming to Australia – but you’ve managed to get him coming regularly again, and that has made a huge difference…

“I’d asked him a few times but he was so busy, he still is very busy and unfortunately the only time of the year he can come out is that hot time around January when a lot of people don’t have horses in work, but okay, you get him when you can. I’ve got to again give credit to Michelle Strapp because she’d written to him asking him to come out – he spoke to me somewhere, and said, Michelle wrote, I can come out, but she hasn’t written back. I said, come out, I’ll arrange something, just come out. I’m very careful now because for any of the coaches who come here, it’s a bloody long way, for him it is 17 hours sitting on a plane. I try to make it as good as possible for him when he comes out. I send out emails to try and make sure the students are well prepared for him – speak when you are spoken to, look spotless, make sure your gear is good. He loves teaching in Wayne’s paddock, he loves that grass area, so he is quite happy to come out because he knows exactly what he is in for. He stays in a little motel down the road, and the gym is about 100 metres away. He enjoyed doing the clinic in Victoria this time… so next year, he’ll do three in NSW and one in Victoria again.”

And you, you’re not slowing down?

“Yeah, I can’t ride anywhere near as many as I used to. I’d ride seven or eight in a day, now four or five pulls me up.”

Does the fire still burn at fiercely?

“I’d need a really nice horse to make me excited. I’m cautiously excited about Cachet and Casino Royale… It depends on the horses. I could be like Laurie Lever, and if you found an Ashleigh Drossel Dan, then you would grab it with both hands. Before I could probably get onto teams with a fair range of horses, I don’t think that is the case now, I’m not that gifted or driven, but if I got a really nice horse, I’d love to do it again.”

It’s great to watch Vicki at work with her students, it is obvious that she enjoys helping them, and they respond to her. In this session, the horse has a truly curious history:

“John Singleton gave me this mare. She is out of Belle de Jour, a really famous racehorse. They couldn’t get the mare to breed so they tried AI, this is the result and of course she couldn’t be registered as a Thoroughbred. Singo swears this is a clone of Belle de Jour…  When I had my eye operation, he said to me, I know you are not into flowers and things, so I’ll give you a horse, the only thing is you can’t sell it. I thought, that’s very sweet of you but my business depends on being able to buy and sell horses, then I thought it might be nice to get him involved and interested in the sport.”

“She was unbroken, and I said that’s a bit useless to me right now, so he got her broken in and then I put her in foal to Errol last year, and she has a lovely Errol filly – except the mare wouldn’t accept it. The kids came running ‘Belle’s had a foal’, so I went out to see, and here is Belle down one end of the paddock and down the other end is the foal with a mare that already had a foal. We got Belle and the mare in and tried to get her to accept the foal, which she wouldn’t, l said to Brett the Vet, the other mare seems to be accepting the foal, is it a problem if I put them out together? Up to you. So I put them out, Belle went off to eat grass, and the other mare came galloping down the paddock and the foal straight away started to feed from her. The foal she had was three months old, it was her first foal, and she obviously thought, I like this, you get a brand new baby every three months.”

“Sometimes I think she is by an Arab… but no-one knows. Gerry Rose who did all the AI work wouldn’t tell Singleton what she was by, John reckons he was experimenting and made a clone… Johnny Walker the vet  was up here one day and he knew Belle de Jour. I didn’t tell him anything I just said look at this one – bloody hell, he said, it is a dead ringer for Belle de Jour. Belle was three when we started to work her, she’s five now. She’s done Jump Club.”

“I’d like to think this mare will jump C and D grades, but I don’t know about much more. She is cute as.”

The student has a somewhat more conventional history, Amanda Ingren-Ohlson is from Sweden and grabbing the opportunity to ride and learn in Australia:

Amanda Ingren-Ohlsonwho has just turned twenty, is enjoying her time in Australia:

“I am from down south of Sweden, near Malmo. I started at a riding school when I was about six, and rode until I was ten. Then I had two years away from riding, actually, I got scared. There was a horse that reared, so I stopped for two years. I have been riding since.”

“I finished high school last year, so this is my free year. I wanted to do something different, and something with horses, my dad got a tip from a lady he knows, and she said contact Vicki Roycroft because she is brilliant. I did and she answered and I am here.”

Is it very different to what you are used to in Sweden?

“Pretty different, especially the riding style. At the riding school, they taught us the German style, that is more sitting deep down in the saddle compared to the American style which is a bit more two point. I like the style here at Vicki’s, it’s really good.”

It would seem that the time at Vicki’s might have put an end to the higher education plans:

“I was planning to go to university next year, but I don’t really know because when I get back home, I will probably want to start competing my horse again and I’ll probably work and compete for another year, but I am going to uni at some stage…”

Vicki is pleased with the way the new combination is shaping up:

“Belle is a good horse for Amanda to ride while she is here. Amanda was typical of the German style, a seat rider, a hand rider, and it was a revelation for her to come across our George Morris-based style.”

And of course, any good jumping lesson starts with work on the flat and once again it is about creating a contact that at the same time lets the horse stretch and use its body:

“Do some transitions, trot walk, walk trot, this is better. Now Amanda is starting to understand about the upper body and the balancing leg, to create that downward transition. Think more inside leg to outside rein even if you turn it into a bit of a leg yield. Make a smaller circle and push her into your outside rein, keep your outside rein, keep the neck straight. Keep at it until you start to feel her chewing the bit, she has to take the contact and chew the bit a little better. Go on to the larger circle again but don’t throw the rein away, keep a little feel, ride her onto the circle, don’t just chuck the rein at her, change your rein through the circle, that’s better… when she comes lighter, then more leg to your hand.”

Time to move on to the canter work:

“Let’s canter the pole. Good girl, that’s the lovely thing about poles and cavallettis, the riders can practice riding lines, riding distances, without scaring the horses or getting them sick of jumping. Remember to keep your leg on and follow… it’s your decision there, it’s either the direct seven or the stay out eight, let’s stick with the seven for the moment, keep forward and even, think of your outside aids, but your position is heaps better.”

“1 2 3 4 5 6 7 – good girl. Great.”

But there were still jumping questions to resolve:

“Push on. When you don’t have a great distance at the first of a related fence line, because you know it’s five strides and you get there a little dead and deep, then you are going to have to make up ground – that’s not rocket science, and it’s not something that you should have to think about, you have to develop it to be your instinct. That’s a related distance, so how you ride the first is going to affect how the second one is going to come up. It you get dead and deep and messy, you’ve got to do something, you’ve got to add a stride or make up the ground.”

“That was pretty good because you are both green, so sometimes when you were doing the right thing, she was reacting a little bit hollow. Amanda still has to learn about getting the horses through, getting them more round, getting them to stretch. The fence get hollow at times right now. Make sure she’s not sitting behind your hand so much, because then she gets to the fence and she is behind your leg and behind your hand and then she gets that praying mantis stuff, now you are not getting in the way, you are staying with her.”

Time to call it a day:

“Just lengthen your rein, give her a pat. You can relax. It’s getting better, it is just a matter of practice. Do the cavallettis, do the poles, get more comfortable with your eye so you are able to find a distance. You’ve got to be able to get her more connected, so that you’ve got more adjustability in the stride. You’ve got to have enough weight in your hands so that she is taking you forward confidently, so that she wants to go forward. It must be, the horse thinks forward and straight until you tell it otherwise. I get on most people’s horses, and the first thing I do is make them go forward. It drives me nuts; I want to be carried forward by the horse, not have to chase it forward. I want the horse to go somewhere. Your position is much better, you are much more with the horse, you are not getting in the way – that is necessary on a horse like this that is green, especially as she is quite a careful little thing.”

The next combination is really quite extraordinary – 14-year-old Stephanie McKillop riding a Welsh cob, Alcheringa Tradition.

According to Stephanie’s mother, Penny:

“We didn’t buy him as a jumping pony, but fortunately for us, he has turned out a ripper. The Welsh Cobs are apparently very talented jumpers but unfortunately not used enough. They are very powerful, very springy.”

Vicki shares her view:

“This guy is amazing, he’s nearly got the stride of a horse and he has got quite a lot of power. I can see him doing Mini Prix, I don’t know if he can do much more than that…”

No World Cup starts…

“It’s not totally out of the question.”

Vicki is happy with the progress:

“He’s come up pretty quick, he is C grade now. I’ve been working with him for 18 months, two years, and now with Steph we are moving into a few of the finer points, instead of just getting from one side to the other.”

Major training issues with him?

“He is a bit of a feisty little pony, sometimes he has his own opinion, not that he doesn’t want to jump, he is as brave as, sometimes too brave. The first thing I’ve been working on is Steph’s warm up techniques, so that they went into the ring focusing on fences. To Steph’s credit she has been great to work with, she is a little younger than the students I usually like to take on, but she has a good brain and works hard. As I said, one of the problems is that sometimes the pony is a little too brave and we have to work on the art of riding very careful fences. It is more the fine-tuning because they are very confident and competent around metre twenty tracks, which is great for a pony of this size. He is just a little gun this horse.”

You said you had to work on warm-up technique…

“She didn’t really has a clue. The first time I went to a show with her, she was a bit crazy and would just jump anything from anywhere, and I said ‘you’ve got to have a program for a warm up, so you go into the ring focused on the top rail’ – she had to be able to get the horse focused on what they were doing. This pony is careful enough, just a little front end rub is enough to get him back being careful, but sometimes he is a little too brave and wants to take them on, he is amazing.”

“The last lesson Steph had with me, I had a little sit on him and it was like the lesson with Ben Blay (see last month); getting the horse to wait for the distance and sit on his hocks, and then holy hell, he jumps the top of the wings. He is quite remarkable with his jump and I don’t want to rush this kid too much, but she is great, she does cope with the more technical elements of the sport. She does get into a little trouble with her hands, she can get jammy. You can see the pony goes in a Spanish snaffle or Kimberwick, which is against my general philosophy, but he is very comfortable in it, so why try and fix what ain’t broke. The pony gives you a good feel in that bit so we stick with it.”

“She is a nice little rider, there is not a lot of work to be done. Okay, with this one she rides without spurs so you have to look that she doesn’t get her heels up – trying to use her heels. He does get a little hot and she gets worried about that, but I would like to get her to use even a little spur because there is nothing better to train a lower leg than a little spur. It trains your lower leg to be still.”

“You’ve got to remember you are on an animal, not a machine, so he is going to think, he is not just going to be a robot, he is going to be thinking about things like the home corner, so anticipate that – that’s it, two reins, two legs.  ”

Vicki is an exacting teacher, and the stirrups are put away for a while:

“On the circle now in slow sitting trot and think about keeping the line of his body on the line of the circle, watch that he doesn’t bulge his left shoulder. Good you have improved your downward transitions because you are using your upper body mpre. You’ve got to learn about combining your aids, combining your leg and your hand and your upper body.”

“Knees and heels down, lower leg back, cuddle him with your lower leg…”

“It is all about teaching Steph to become the rider not the passenger, so it becomes a comfortable relationship – okay she is the senior partner but he  is accepting of the whole thing. You develop the attitude in the horse – what would you like me to do now?”

Steph doesn’t mind that her teacher is tough:

“Vicki is great. I love having lessons with her. I can tell her any problem, and she’ll help me with it, she really understands my horse and knows what is good for him.”

She is tough too, she makes you ride without your stirrups…

“She says it is the best thing for your riding. It’s good though, she is tough but it makes you a better rider for it.”

The work is getting more complicated:

“Okay pop into canter, do the pole, then the pole, then the cavalletti. Keep him straight, keep your outside rein a little better. Pole to cavalletti, seven or eight, it is sometimes better to do the seven, that was the eight.”

“Do the two cavallettis, I want you to do a couple of fives, then I want you to do a four and then a six. That was the five, do another five. Half halt and six, very good. Now the four, that’s it, get him going on the long side, look early, get your pace, very good. Okay come back to a five now.”

“That’s quite a nice exercise for the young ones and the green ones to learn about the different pace and the balance, and learn to count their strides. He has a good canter and now he is up in metre twenty, metre thirty classes, he has had to learn to adjust his stride. And for a 14-year-old, this girl is really quite a rider.”

And the teacher, quite a teacher.

George Morris is not only a master trainer, rider and clinician, he is – like so many of his countrymen – a wonderful communicator, and a writer who takes great delight in the elegantly wrought sentence and apt choice of phrase. So it is in his most recent work, The American Jumping Style, written in 1992 and published the following year.
 In it, George traces the development of the American style, finding its bedrock in the Anglo/Irish tradition:

“What is our English riding base? Well, to start with, thank the good Lord, it is the love of the horse, the first and most important basis for good horsemanship… What else did we get from the English besides a horse mentality? How to care for the animal. Love means attention, which means looking after the thing we love… Our horses have it good, and this is thanks to the English tradition of good horsemanship.”

And along with the English tradition came cross-country riding and with it the hunt seat: “The Old English Hunting Seat was the forerunner to our modern American Hunter Seat. Yes, it lacked the style and grace of what we know today, but it got the job done and saved one’s neck. I would call the Old English Hunting Seat the grandfather of hunter seat equitation, not the father. There was an important step in between: the Forward Seat.”

It was the Italian, Federico Caprilli who at the beginning of the twentieth century taught: “By shortening the stirrups, driving the heels down, leaning forward and following the horse’s mouth, riders had an easier time, and horses did too. Horse and rider both became less fatigued, went faster, jumped higher, stayed in better balance, and were more comfortable. To the worldwide horse community, this must have been akin to inventing the wheel. Dawn had broken – get off the horse’s mouth and free his back!”

As George Morris points out the American spirit of freedom was a ready ally of the new seat, and the American cavalry officers studied at the Italian cavalry schools and the Forward Seat was adopted by the US Cavalry School at Fort Riley, ‘where our greatest officer instructors and Army Olympic teams were trained.’

Lt. Colonel Harry D Chamberlin – one of those American cavalry officers who brought the teachings of the Italians and the French to the United States; even in the 1930’s you can see the American style developing.

Those same American cavalry officers were also sent to the French Cavalry School at Saumur, and brought home the great French principles of riding and dressage. This amalgam produced George Morris’ own mentor, Gordon Wright ‘the greatest architect of the American Jumping Style’, another Fort Riley graduate.

To complete this heady mix there came in the 1950’s the influence of the German school, through Bertalan de Némethy, Richard Wätjen and Gunnar Andersen – all of whom emphasised the ‘rider’s seat and use of back and weight above all else.’

French equitation was so important in the development of the American style – here is Commandant Lessage of Saumur.

The mix was right – it was time for the Americans to dazzle the world:

“Our riding style has been the envy of the world for the past thirty years, whether people want to admit it or not. Ever since Bertalan de Némethy brought his team of five young men onto the European jumping scene in the midfifties, people have gaped and gawked at our remarkable style.”

To the horsemen came the horses, and these were to be found in rich heritage of the American Thoroughbred. As de Némethy remarked, ‘You don’t need to go abroad to buy horses…’ for in their Thoroughbreds, the Americans had ‘the best for Olympic jumping.’ George explains why:

“First, the physical size and type are right. These are big (sixteen to seventeen hands), light, athletic, refined animals. Second, the mental capacity is usually good. While blood horses are often hot and nervous, they are at the same time extremely sensitive and intelligent, and what’s more important, bold…”

And as George points out, the breed of horse has a lot to do with creating a riding style – the ‘Thoroughbred’ countries tend to ride with the motion, where ‘half-breed countries’ tend to ride deeper and in a driving position.

George Morris succinctly defines the elements of that American style: “We learned to ride with neither too long nor too short a stirrup, the basic length being the stirrup’s tread touching the ankle bone. We learned to place the stirrup on the ball of the foot in order to more easily drive the heel down and to turn the toes out slightly, consequently flexing the ankles. Our contact with the horse is with the calf of the leg and the inner knee bone, not just with the knee. As a result, this constant, quiet, and very secure lower leg contact is effective yet less disturbing to the horse than a swinging or pivoting leg. We allow the seat to be deep, yet by the forward inclination of the upper body, light in the saddle, we provide flexibility of the upper body by positioning it differently for different gaits and speeds. We learned to keep our heads up and use our eyes positively. Last but not least, we maintained a line from the rider’s elbow to the horse’s mouth, thus establishing the most direct and elastic contact possible.”

There is yet another flavour to be added to the dish – the Hunter and Hunt Seat Equitation classes, another force for style – and perhaps the origin of the amazing attention to detail that characterises the American approach.

Piero d’Inzeo and The Rock – The Italians also rode Thoroughbred horses and developed a forward, softer style. The pair are competing in London in 1962.

In the Hunter classes, “in order to produce what is required for this picture (and don’t forget, by the way, the hot, sensitive Thoroughbred-type horse that is part of the picture), the horseman must stick closely to the purest and most classical riding techniques that have stood up under the test of time for generations. Any slight deviation from the accepted principles of the American School of riding promises to backfire. By deviation, I mean something as miniscule as the position of the rider’s spur, the length of his whip, or how he places his foot in the stirrup. It doesn’t succeed and the rider eventually must come back to the basics.”

And with that attention to detail, came the distinctive saddle:

“What about saddles? Why did we shift away from the basket-type continental saddles so popular in the fifties to the lighter, flatter ‘close contact’ saddle? There were several reasons. First of all, Bill Steinkraus, our first individual gold medallist in show jumping and a great influence on American riders, likes the French Hermes saddle. He claimed that it put his leg closer to his horse, and therefore he could feel the horse better and ride better. He was right! Second, as people were learning and adopting an educated leg, they also found a flatter saddle more efficient and comfortable. And third, the flatter, smaller saddles were more attractive, with a streamlined, clean, simple look, the better to show off our show hunters and equitation riders.”

One of the many interesting features of the George Morris teaching technique is the way he sets up fences that in themselves improve the horse’s jumping ability. He attributes this system to the Hungarian super trainer:

“What Bertalan de Némethy did for American riders forty years ago was to emphasize and refine cavalletti and gymnastic training and give us a system. His work with jumpers, coupled with the American professional’s schooling methods for hunters, redefined the way we ride and school jumping horses. We learned to ride a relatively free horse over a series of closely related fences, teaching the horse not only to listen to his rider, but to balance himself, use himself athletically, and think for himself. We also learned to set up appropriate cavalletti and gymnastic exercises, to pay attention to how we approach them, and to stay out of the horse’s way, allowing him to learn from experience.”

George Morris in action – winning the Grand Prix of Aachen on Night Owl in 1960

Reading George’s history of the development of style, it is hard not to compare and contrast with the prevailing attitudes in Australia at the same time:

“The American Jumping Style is based on correct techniques. These techniques can never be learned by going fast or jumping big fences before the fundamentals have been established, because the rider cannot concentrate on his own form and on jumping a big fence at the same time. (The same can be said for the horse, too!) Exercises practised over a pole on the ground or a series of cavalletti are ideally suited to teaching people to ride with sound basics and with style. The rider can concentrate on the exercise, because the cavalletti or ‘jumps’ are very simple. Later, when the exercise has done its work and the correct technique is established as a habit, it will be second nature to the rider when he jumps larger fences. All of the fundamental techniques used in jumping are taught and confirmed over ground poles or cavalletti long before the thrill of that first ‘real jump’.”

Australia too was a Thoroughbred-riding nation, but with few notable exceptions, our riders never developed schooling programs to maximise the Thoroughbred advantages, while minimising their drawbacks. Legend has it that Kalman de Jurenak applied for the job the Americans gave to de Némethy, and when he failed to get it, he came to Australia instead. Photos of de Jurenak jumping at the time show a wonderful classical style over fences, and although he was appointed for a while as the EFA assistant coach under Franz Mairinger, he does not seem to have had anything like de Némethy’s influence on the elite level riders, but then again, faced with Aussie pig-headed cockiness, de Némethy himself may not have been any more successful than his countryman.

Ben O’Meara competing on Jacks or Better in Washington in 1963

George also pays tribute to another lesser-known trainer, Ben O’Meara:

“One of the great American contributors to our use of gymnastics was Ben O’Meara, one of our most successful open jumper riders, horse dealers and trainers until his tragic and untimely death in 1966. During the early 1960s he incorporated some wonderful exercises and ideas into his training of jumpers.”

“O’Meara would start with a cross rail (approached in a trot), followed by a series of square oxers about seventeen feet apart. There would usually be four oxers in all. After the horse had become accustomed to the exercise, he would eliminate the cross rail and just canter the multiple combination of oxers. These oxers were not small – they would be quite wide, five or five and a half feet. As the fences got bigger and wider, he would get more ‘generous’ and space the fences about twenty feet apart.”

“Most of the horses O’Meara dealt with were hot Thoroughbreds off the race track; many had never jumped a fence before he acquired them. They got a ‘crash course’ (literally and figuratively!) in doing this exercise daily. Because they were hot horses, they needed very little leg. O’Meara insisted on long release (all his female jockeys could do it well!) and on using the opening or leading rein for steering. The cluck would more or less replace the leg aid. Through this system of riding, the horses had to learn to help themselves to the maximum. They were given minimum support from their riders, some of who were fairly elementary themselves (Kathy Kusner, later an Olympian was the exception – she was O’Meara’s star rider, with enormous talent and experience even at that point in her career.)”

“If a horse survived this training (and it was a hard test), he was quite a good horse. He learned to fend for himself, to be quick in front and good behind, to get very round, and above all to concentrate on his fences. His scope and heart were stretched – these were big oxers! It was amazing that Ben O’Meara could produce jumper after jumper for the show ring in a matter of weeks. Even though they were still very green, they were bold, brave and extremely careful, and they’d win. A long string of O’Meara’s horses eventually jumped for the U. S. Equestrian team, including the great Untouchable, Jacks or Better, and others.”

George feels that had O’Meara lived ‘his ideas would have levelled out and become less extreme.’

There are many pages in The American Jumping Style devoted to training issues, to matter of technique, but over and over again, the work is informed by that exceptional group of horsemen who have crafted the American way of riding – like George’s predecessor in his current job of Chef d’Equipe for the American team, Frank Chapot:

“Years ago, Frank Chapot, one of our greatest Olympic riders and among the best speed riders of all time, taught me a great lesson: go as fast to the first fence as to the last fence. This sets the pace and rhythm for a jump-off or a speed class. It gets the rider’s blood up. Often people go what they think is fast but it is not really fast, to the first fence. Many a class can be won by applying that lesson.”

George back in 1992 was already worried about the future of the American Jumping Style:

“Our society today – riders, teachers, and pupils – is not the same. The old values of discipline, hard work and getting one’s hands dirty have changed. Specialists exist in every field, and riders today don’t have to do a little bit of everything. This makes them more limited and therefore weaker horsemen. It’s a funny thing, but the more one does around the barn with his own hands and his own horse, the better rider he’ll be in the ring.”

George looks to the discipline of dressage for a clue to the future:

“Look what has happened in dressage today. Yes, there are lots of effective riders; they get the job done. But where is the style? Where are the invisible aids? As far as I can see, the style is all but gone. Stirrups are long. Consequently riders are reaching for their stirrups, which raises their heels and loosens their legs. Without an effective lower leg, we see ‘body riding’ or pumping, and riders way behind the motion of their horses, often behind the vertical. This position in turn goes along with a roached back and a bobbing head, and all too often with hands too low and eyes down. Go to any dressage show today, and you will see too much of this kind of riding. That is what has happened to style in the dressage community, but it didn’t use to be that way. The dressage riders of the fifties, sixties, and seventies were much better stylists than most today. That decline will happen in the jumping world, too, if we do not continue to teach along strictly classical lines. Teachers must be the watchdogs of history.”

“Style in riding, be it dressage or jumping, is a precious thing. It has evolved over many centuries and has been taught, practised and passed down to us by men who were smarter than we are. I’ve always felt it better to be a good copier than a poor innovator. Let’s not fix what isn’t broken, nor tamper with the foundation of all our riding success up until now. It would be a crime to lose our American Jumping Style and what it has stood for. We cannot let that happen.”

It would seem that George Morris is right now protecting that precious style in the most effective way. Newly appointed as the American chef, he and his team are storming their way around Europe right now – sweeping all before them. As George has no doubt said on more than one occasion, good style is winning style.

The American Style has spread back into the European teams – Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum was a Morris pupil before moving to Germany and into the German Team. She is seen here on the current World Cup Champion, Shutterfly – a Hanoverian horse, but one with lots of Blood.

Related Articles:

FOUR SHOWJUMPING MASTERS – Part 2: William Steinkraus

FOUR SHOWJUMPING MASTERS – Part 3: Bertalan de Némethy

FOUR SHOWJUMPING MASTERS: Part 4: Gordon Wright

It is intriguing that one of the great modern masters of American equitation came from one of the oldest and most traditional of equestrian milieu – the European Cavalry. 
De Némethy was born in Gyor, Hungary in 1911. His father governed three of Hungary’s 19 states, and young Bertalan was raised in the Governor’s mansion and educated by Benedictine monks.

Bertalan de Nemethy on Adam II in Vienna, Austria, 1939

Encouraged by his horseman uncle, de Némethy fell in love with the sport of showjumping, and it was to pursue this love that he enrolled in the military academy of Ludovica. He spent four years at the Ludovica Academy, graduating in 1932 as a lieutenant in the cavalry assigned to the Hussars of the Count of Nadassy.

After four years of service he was selected to attend the Hungarian cavalry school. 
The officer/students rode six horses a day, starting on dressage horses, riding on the longe line without stirrups, later going cross-country on young horses.

“Today there is no such way – I shall call it ‘classical’ – for anybody to be sent to learn, because it doesn’t exist any more. There are no specially educated teachers to observe. I rode hundreds and hundreds of horses for two years, riding many hours without stirrups and working with many different instructors. Today there is no one with so much experience on a horse,” he told Paula Rodenas, the author of The de Némethy Years.

De Némethy graduated in 1937 and was asked to stay on and teach. He also became a member of the four rider Nations Cup team and commenced training for the 1940 Olympic Games – the Games that were never held because of the outbreak of the Second World War.

De Némethy was the first Hungarian officer to be sent to the German cavalry school of Hanover, where he rode with such luminaries as Fritz Stecken, Bubbi Gunther and Otto Lörke, who was in charge of the dressage stable.
 With the Russian Army closing in on Budapest towards the end of the war, de Némethy fled to Denmark, and he taught in Copenhagen for the next six years.

In 1952 he accepted the offer of relocation to the United States, and started teaching at the Sleepy Hollow Country Club, Tarrytown, New York, where he made friends with several top riders, including William Steinkraus. De Némethy was offered the position as USET jumping coach, and eventually took up the position in 1955.

In an interview with American equestrian journalist, Nancy Jaffer, de Némethy remembered what he encountered when he took over that rough-around-the-edges show jumping squad.

“They were not sitting backwards on their horses,” he said with a sly smile. “But they had no dressage preparation. It was not fashionable or known at that time. They were experienced in hunter classes primarily.”

Kathy Kusner and Untouchable at the 1960 Games – Kathy came from riding for a horse dealer but soon became a star pupil – “The girls showed they could be not only equal, but better.” Photo – Werner Ernst

USET member Chrystine Jones Tauber, who took over the Gladstone centre and worked as director of show jumping activities after de Nemethy’s 1980 retirement, noted that he showed the Americans ‘the value of having a system’. He felt that without basic dressage and cavalletti, horses wouldn’t perform up to their potential.

She recalled his emphasis on drilling riders on the lunge line without stirrups or reins. The favourite horse for that exercise was Royal Beaver, a retired eventing mount, who clomped around without the finesse or lightness that de Némethy urged his riders to elicit from the gelding.

“You’d be squeezing ‘til your legs were numb,” said Tauber. “You could hardly walk the next day.” But she thinks those lessons paid off in a uniformity of style and the excellent seat that became the American trademark.

Before going on to win his individual gold medal at Mexico City in 1968, William Steinkraus spent half an hour on the lunge!

It was Steinkraus who pointed out last month, that he looked to a synthesis of the French and the German approaches, and it seems that de Némethy did much the same.

In his Classic Show Jumping: The de Némethy Method he cites both the German master, Steinbrecht and the French maitre, L’Hotte as the source of his basic principles:

“Gustav Steinbrecht, who is still regarded by many as the greatest German master of equestrian art, offered a simple summation of the basic principles of riding: ‘Ride your horse forward, and keep it straight.’ The famous French general, L’Hotte agreed, but found it necessary to rank calmness even ahead of the other concepts; his own motto was ‘calm, forward and straight.’ 
Both concepts are intertwined.

“We must remember that the two concepts, riding forward and making the horse straight, are in fact interrelated. In other words, the horse will resist the demand for forward obedience if it is not straight within its body position, for, if it is crooked, the harmonious, flowing forward movement will be disturbed. Indeed, resistance usually originates due either to crookedness, or mental or temperamental difficulties. On the other hand, keeping the body straight in the absence of any willingness to move forward is hardly possible. Consequently, before deciding which of the two basic principles should receive priority, we must consider their basic definitions and analyse the feelings linked to them.”

So sitting in the saddle how do we know when our horse is straight?

“When one sits evenly on both seat bones, keeping one’s hipbones naturally straight above them, the lower legs remain in the same position on both sides. We can feel and see the horse’s shoulders moving evenly and parallel to each other. Its neck is straight and directly in front of the middle of our body. Its ears are even, and we can barely see its eyebrows. Our contact with its mouth is the same on both sides.”

And the reverse?

“What feeling do we get when we are sitting on a horse that is crooked in its body? If one of the hind legs deviates, we should immediately feel it through our seat. The deviating hind leg pushes and transfers more weight to the opposite shoulder and, accordingly, pushes our seat to that side. The horse’s neck bends in the direction of the deviating hind leg, and the body becomes hollow – or bent – to a certain degree on that side. The horse tries to find support in our opposite hand by stiffening its jaw, and, if it can find that support, by adding weight to it. On the opposite side, the ribs are curved outwardly, indicating that our leg is not accepted and, indeed, is being thrown away. In essence, the whole direction of the movement inclines towards the side to which weight was transferred by the deviating hind leg.”

Ever listened to badly trained showjumping horses in action? Listen, don’t watch, and you hear the lack of rhythm, the footfalls are all over the place. Why? The horse is not forward.

“Liveliness and impulsion are both components of forward obedience, and neither should ever be confused with mere nervousness, the criterion being that the horse’s regularity of movement must remain undisturbed. However, liveliness cannot be separated from impulsion, the latter being partly natural and a result of innate temperament, and partly something that is developed through proper training.”

Frank Chapot was for many years a key member of the American showjumping team. Here he is riding San Lucas at the Mexico Olympics. “The thing that Bert always had was a lot of class,” said Chapot, “He was always a gentleman and could deal with horse owners and team members, even if they were difficult and demanding. He never lost his cool.” Photo – Werner Ernst

The next, and more complex concept is that of Balance. First we must find the horse’s centre of gravity:

“It is at the level of the sixth rib, just behind the point of the elbow and about two thirds of the way down from the top line along its back. Alternatively, if one makes a vertical line from behind the withers, and a horizontal line from the shoulder point to the buttock, the point at which these two imaginary lines cross each other in the body of the horse would also be the centre of gravity.”

“Maintaining the horse’s natural balance is of primary importance in riding. This in turn depends on the rider’s ability to bring his own centre of gravity into synchrony with that of the horse. The rider’s position, as well as his weight, must be adjusted to the horse’s movements; usually by the rider placing his body directly above or ahead of the horse’s centre of gravity, depending on the horse’s velocity.”

In other words, the faster the horse is going, the further forward the upper body of the rider goes, but never so much that the rider’s centre of gravity is in front of the horse’s.

But balance involves more than the positioning of the rider’s body, “the horse’s natural balance can be maintained only if its weight is evenly distributed between its right and left pair of legs, as well as between the forelegs and hind legs. When the horse’s hindquarters are more engaged by the rider’s influence, and its hind legs reach closer to the centre of gravity line under its body, its hindquarters will sink, its centre of gravity will move back, and its forehand will thus become somewhat relieved of carrying the added weight.”

Richard Wätjen who studied and worked in the Spanish Riding School, Vienna from 1916-21, before setting up his training centre in Berlin, was another influential figure in the development of American riding, and de Némethy quotes with approval his dictum:

“Balance is the result of impulsion in harmony with collection.”

The next critical factor is rhythm as distinct from cadence:

“Cadence is often confused with rhythm, for the terms are closely related; but there is a subtle shade of difference between the two. The rhythmical movement of the horse is individualized, and depends upon the particular horse’s conformation, size and disposition. The horse’s cadence, on the other hand, can be developed only in a more collected frame: the strides become shorter, the leg action becomes more elevated, and the sequence of the movements becomes slower. Since no horse will remain in its ideal rhythm at any gait instinctively, the rider must use his influence to discover and regulate it. When the rider is finally able to maintain this ideal natural rhythm, the horse’s maximum stability is achieved.”

Mary Mairs first rode for the States at the 1963 Pan American Games on Tomboy. She rode Tomboy at the Tokyo Olympics and is pictured on White Lightening at Mexico. Mary married fellow team member Frank Chapot in 1965. When de Némethy first took his USET team out to the big American shows, they were not taken seriously by the seasoned professionals. “But after we started to win, their attitude changed! They didn’t like to see ‘little girls’ like Mary Mairs and Kathy Kusner beating someone who had been making his living with horses for the past fifteen or twenty years.” Photo – Werner Ernst

De Némethy has been credited with the introduction of gymnastic exercises to the American jumping scene, or at least, their very great refinement, but he is careful to pay tribute to the Italian inventor of the forward seat, Caprilli, in developing these methods:

“His system was uncomplicated. Change the rider’s position; do not disturb the horse’s natural balance; train the horse to take care of itself and yet be disciplined, obedient and confident in its rider. Caprilli was convinced that logical and systematic training was necessary for the jumper. His training area was a country field, and his program involved jumping many low fences from a trot, and trotting over rails on the ground. Eventually he added little feet to the rails to stabilize and slightly raise them, so that they resembled little saw horses, or cavalletti.”

De Némethy’s use of cavalletti in the United States was something of a last ditch measure. He’d been engaged as U.S. Equestrian Team coach in 1955 to prepare them for the Olympics the following year. With such a short time left before the team departed for Europe, de Némethy judged that he could not make ‘drastic’ changes:

“I had to figure out methods which would let them build on what they already knew, while developing techniques that would help them cope with European competitive conditions, which were very different from those they were familiar with from domestic competition. I concluded that if I could find a way to control the horses’ take-off without upsetting their temperaments, I could enable both the horses and riders to practice what they needed to work on. The system of cavalletti to control the take-off, combined with gymnastics could produce exactly the desired result. The method of using cavalletti and gymnastics that I devised and developed through necessity is a very flexible one, and does not need to be applied according to rigid, hard and fast rules. Yet if it is employed intelligently and imaginatively, it can help to solve many different problems, and can almost infallibly help to develop whatever potential ability both the horses and the riders possess, in a shorter period of time than might otherwise be required.”

So if the next time you find yourself sharing an arena with a bunch of poles, cavalletti and little jumps, you know who to blame…
What is critical to the success of this exercise is the distances between the poles.

Use of the cavalletti: Bertalan de Némethy on San Lucas in Aachen, Germany 1972. The horse’s legs are in perfect coordination.
The hoofprints are in the middle of the poles. The rider’s position is correct.
(from The de Némethy Method)

“The normal distances between vary from 4 to 5 feet. Horses of average size usually start with 4 foot six inch to 4 foot nine inch distances. However, after a couple of tries one can observe if some adjustment is necessary, one way or the other, and the spacing can be adjusted to the natural length of the particular horse’s stride.”

The benefits of this exercise are many:

“What is the benefit to the horse of trotting over cavalletti? Our primary goal is to capture the horse’s attention and focus its concentration on the ground. It is an old horse master’s axiom: ‘Show your horse the ground’. Trotting over the cavalletti encourages the horse to stretch its neck down from the shoulder and look where to put its feet. Because it must lift its feet higher over the poles that it would on flat ground, its tendons and muscles – especially those of the hindquarters – become stronger. Furthermore, in concentrating on the ground and stretching its neck, the horse raises its spine and surrounding muscles, thus loosening up its back. In short, the entire musculature of the horse becomes conditioned and relaxed.”

And let us not forget that original last-ditch strategy de Némethy developed for his Stockholm team:

“Since we can control the horse’s impulsion and speed by using four correctly spaced cavalletti, we can also control the correct take-off point for a fence (crossed rails) built after the cavalletti. This fence should be placed nine to ten feet beyond the last cavalletti – twice the distance between any two cavalletti themselves. By controlling the take-off in this way, it will be stabilized and can be practiced over and over, so that the jumping technique of the horse as well as the style of the rider can be corrected and developed.”

The plan is well set out in the diagram from The de Némethy Method shown below.

Take-off and bascule exercises are beneficial for the following purposes: 1) improving the timing in approaching the first cavalletti; 2) the cavalletti makes the horse relaxed and helps it to concentrate on the ground before arriving at the take-off point; 3) the horse instinctively makes a correct bascule over the fence and properly employs its mechanism to lift its weight; 4) the rider can analyze his style over the fence. Note that in altering fences, the rear rail should be raised first; then the fence should be spread, and the front rail raised last.

This is just one of a series of fabulous diagrams setting out a whole host of wonderfully thought out gymnastic exercises. Any serious jumping rider should rush to their website and track down a second hand copy of The de Némethy Method – last time I looked there were a few on Amazon.com.

De Némethy was coach of the USET team for 25 years from 1955 to 1980 and produced teams that could more than hold their own anywhere in the world:

“Bert took us to a whole new dimension of riding and training horses,” said George Morris, “Although he only was involved with the elite level, it filtered down. The top pulled up the rest. It was a perfect recipe. He had a great country to work with, he had great horsemen, and the hunter base prepared horses. He had this diamond in the rough.”

“He was a class person. If you did something wrong, you knew you had to answer to him,” said another of his famous students, Michael Matz. “But he told you, and that was it, and nothing was held against you, and you knew you weren’t going to do it again.”

There was a feeling that de Némethy had a hard time adjusting to female team members. The cavalry squads on which he rode before the war were all male, and the same was true in every other country that competed in team events internationally.

In the early 1970s, Melanie Smith Taylor, a member of the 1984 Olympic gold medal team said, “lady riders were not considered as ‘strong and dependable’ as the men. Therefore, it was much harder for us to make the team. It took many tries for me personally to earn Bert’s confidence. But once we girls proved our mettle, Bert was forever loyal to us.”

When it came to the social activities that once were so much a part of the international show scene, de Némethy laid down the law just as much as he did in the ring.:

“He would tell us, `you girls be in the lobby of the hotel in a half-hour in long gowns with your hair clean,’” said Carol Hofmann Thompson, laughing as she remembered the trauma of three women with one bathroom among them trying to follow those orders.

“He really loved having the girls to show off,” she added. At the same time, he was always devoted to his late wife, Emily, whom he adored. He was never the same after her sudden death in 1997.
 After his retirement as team coach, de Némethy was in keen demand as a course builder, and advisor to riders all over the United States. His contribution to the development of American – and through that World – showjumping, is unique. 
As that poet, William Steinkraus puts it, his place in equestrian history is secure: “You couldn’t erase the traditions if you tried. They are part of our collective experience. Even if thirty years from now, people ask ‘Who was Bertalan de Némethy?’ They will still be doing things his way.”

Bertalan de Némethy on Adam II in Munich, Germany, 1939 – everything old is new again…

FOUR SHOWJUMPING MASTERS – Part 1: George Morris

FOUR SHOWJUMPING MASTERS – Part 2: William Steinkraus

FOUR SHOWJUMPING MASTERS: Part 4: Gordon Wright

The first time I realised that riding could have a dimension of intellectual excitement came when I observed a William Steinkraus clinic at Art Uytendaal’s training stables back in early 1983. It was also the first time I realised that when interviewing Americans, the pen is a way too slow an instrument. Even with Roz gallantly trying to distract Mr Steinkraus as my biro battled to keep pace, there was no way I could completely capture the elegance off the visitor’s expression.

Steinkraus is not only a thinker, but a poet, though on this particular occasion, like poets and prophets the world over, his words fell largely on fallow ground – indeed his EFA ‘minder’ fell asleep during our interview… and I suspect that his concepts were way too subtle for the riders he was attempting to enlighten.

Even in Europe, Bill Steinkraus was considered a little too cultured to be an American!

Bertalan de Némethy remarked that: “Bill was a no-nonsense man. American riders respected him for his horsemanship, and the Europeans were surprised that someone as cultured, educated and intelligent could be an American rider!”

Bill Steinkraus’ message was dead simple really – good style is effective style. He told me back in 1983: “I hear people saying that a rider is ‘crude but effective’ but that is a contradiction. If someone is effective, then they are subtle. They don’t make their aids obvious because they don’t have to. The highest praise is to have someone say, ‘It looks as if the horse was doing it all by himself.’ All that means is that you have reached the stage where you can put every foot exactly where you want it, right around the course, you have arrived at the jump with exactly the right amount of impulsion, at exactly the angle you wanted, in the frame you wanted, and on exactly the right spot – the jump is inevitable.”

Little surprise, that Mr Steinkraus expressed just one regret even then, that he ‘didn’t retire a little earlier and go into dressage but I didn’t want to leave the showjumping team when I felt I still had a contribution to make.’

No surprise then to find in the revised and updated edition of his Reflections on Riding and Jumping – Winning Techniques for Serious Riders, that the intellect plays a crucial role in his philosophy:

“Rational riding starts with the idea that it’s easier to do something if you know very concretely what you’re trying to do, why you’re trying to do it and how it functions mechanically. ‘I can’t work that way,’ some riders protest. ‘It leads to paralysis through analysis.’ Well, that’s a good catch phrase, and it may even apply to some people, but there’s another famous aphorism that is just as catchy and twice as valid: Those who can’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Steinkraus recalls that as an ‘amateur’ rider, he had to commute between work and the US team training centre, but put the travelling time to good purpose, ‘on my way out there, planning what I was going to try to accomplish, and on the drive back, reviewing what had happened, and what I wanted to work on the next time. In those days, I thought this was a considerable disadvantage, and that I’d have been much more competitive if only I could have ridden every day. But in retrospect, I think it may even have been an advantage, for over the years I learned to make better and better use of my time on horseback, and was able to think out possible solutions to problems that might never have occurred to me spontaneously.”

In practical terms this means that “the key to a demanding Grand Prix jumper course is often a particular difficult line involving big fences, difficult distances, a combination and a turn that must be executed with great precision. Yet each of these elements can be isolated and mastered in simpler form in schooling long before we face them all together and in a more complex version during competition. For example, we can work out the line and the turn by using simple rails on the ground or cavalletti at the trot and canter; we can work out the distance problems of the combination through cavalletti and gymnastic grids. And when we put all these ingredients back together at speed over big fences, we can handle the problem instead of being overwhelmed by its difficulty and complexity.”

You can imagine how Mr Steinkraus was received in Australia a quarter of a century ago, when he suggested that getting over the jumps was not the challenge, what was interesting was the ability – or lack of it – to smoothly canter the ‘course’ without the jumps!

A gold medal at Mexico for Bill Steinkraus and Snowbound.
This horse was one of a series of brilliant Thoroughbreds that took Steinkraus to international success – he was by Hail Victory out of a mare by Gay World.
Snowbound joined the US team in 1964 and was still winning international classes in Euopre seven years later!

Twenty two years ago, he told Australian jumping riders: “We start with problems on the flat and solve them on the flat. For until the problems on the flat are solved, the problems over fences are not all that interesting. What a horse can do out of self-defence over a fence is only a fraction of his true ability if he still has a problem on the flat.”

As usual with American equestrian experts, Mr Steinkraus is a stickler for detail, and his book covers everything from gloves – ‘avoid extremes… gloves should either have their seams turned in where the reins go, be protected by an additional layer, or both’ – to saddles. Naturally, Steinkraus prefers the Hermès saddle after all, he designed it for the company, but luckily for riders without the wherewithal for the boutique option he does specify what should be looked for:

“It is essential that the lowest point in the seat is halfway between the pommel and the cantle and not further back, which makes you feel as if you’re always riding slightly uphill; the head or pommel must not press against the top of the withers of a horse of average conformation (if it does, it’s more often because the tree is spread than because of bad original design, but I’ve seen the latter, too); flaps and skirts must be heavy enough to resist folding or curling up under your leg; finally, the stirrup bars must hold the stirrup leathers securely with the safety latch open (and it should never be closed!).”

Bill Steinkraus and Sinjon, winning The Country Life and Riding Cup in London, 1962. Sinjon was a member of the US team from 1958 to 1964

And why is Bill Steinkraus fussy about his saddle?

Because he is fanatical about rider position – and why? 
“Because the kind of riding I’m talking about is more than simply staying on. It inevitably involves the education and development of the horse, and this is accomplished through our aids – our body language – by eliciting and rewarding the behaviour we want, and by resisting and blocking the behaviour we do not want. And in order to resist, sustain and reward effectively, our aids must be totally independent of the business of staying on, and they must function from a stable platform. That platform is our position, or more precisely, those positions that facilitate the instrumental acts we require.”

The concept of positions plural is important. Steinkraus explains that the seat is a spectrum, from the defensive ‘safety’ seat to the ‘highly permissive, extreme forward seat’ and sitting in the middle is ‘the median seat’. But moving to the extremes is cautioned against:

“I hasten to add that having a whole collection of seats, including some extreme ones, doesn’t mean that you use all of them every day. Quite the contrary! In fact, if we arbitrarily say that the median seat is situated at 5.0 on a scale from 0 to 10, most of your riding will be in the area from 4.8 to 5.2 and only rarely make an excursion into something more extreme.”

The median seat is not only in the middle of this spectrum, it is also the position in which the rider’s joints and muscles are in a median position – ‘halfway between the extremes of full extension and complete flexion. In this neutral position, they not only enjoy maximum elasticity, but at the same time can move very readily in either direction.’

While the heel must be deeper than the toe (this is America) Steinkraus warns against an exaggeratedly deep heel:

“It’s important to remember that even a virtue, carried to excess, may become a sin. So it is with the deep heel. If the heel is forced as low as it will go, the ankle will be frozen shut, no longer able to function as a spring; while the calf in full extension loses its elasticity and becomes impossible for a sensitive horse to accept. (Some teachers and equitation judges cannot imagine too deep a heel, but I still regard it as functionally wrong.) The toe should turn out only to the extent that it normally does in walking.”

Jumping at Lucerne in 1960 – Bill Steinkraus and Riviera Wonder. Yet another jumping Thoroughbred, this time by Bonne Nuit out of Winter Rose who was the dam of another US team horse, Unusual. Riviera Wonder was on the silver medal winning team at the Rome Games.

Moving up the rider’s leg: “The bottom of the calf should be applied to the little triangle of the horse’s side just behind the girth and just below the saddle flap, if the rider’s leg is long enough. Ideally, this is the place where you add or subtract calf pressure in order to modulate your driving aids. If you like to think of having a bolt driven through your legs to create a secure, stable seat, that is where you should visualize it, and not through the knee. If you do so, you will never pinch with the knee, and never have a problem in posting too high or assuming too high a half-seat. (I prefer the term ‘half-seat’ for what is sometimes called a ‘two-point’ position). When the heel is not excessively deep, the calf itself will be elastic and clinging. Levelling the foot more makes it even softer for horses that try to reject the leg. Dropping the heel hardens the calf as needed in emergencies or for drive.”

But it is not only the lower leg:

“Perhaps the crucial point in dealing with the rider’s seat is the attitude of the back or spinal column. You must be able to release your back vertically, so it can swing freely with the horse’s back, and you also must be able to stress or brace it readily.”

Once the back is right, the head follows: “If the shoulders are comfortably drawn back (never rounded or hunched forward), the head will naturally be free, easy and erect as well. The eyes should be focused on where you’re going, a simple thing that seems to help coordinate all of the rider’s actions on horseback.”

Legs are crucial but so are arms:

“What must the hand and arm be able to do? Yield, sustain, resist. What they do not need to do is pull, because no rider has ever won a pulling contest with a horse. In order to sustain and resist, the hands must be supported from the rider’s elastically braced back and, to the necessary degree, from the support of the upper arm against the side.”

Want to know why the dreaded ‘eventer’s elbow’ – that unsightly triangle so many eventing riders make with their elbows out and pointed sideways – is not only ugly but dysfunctional?

Let Mr Steinkraus explain: “the position of the rider’s arms with flat hands and an extended elbow (is) such an impediment to a good rider. The fact that the hands are forced forward and low, rounds the rider’s shoulders, pulls his buttocks out of the saddle and shifts his weight too far forward; the fact that the elbow is extended robs him of the use of that joint as a means of insulating the hands from the movement of the upper body (in the posting trot, for example) and encourages him both to pull and rest his hands on the horse’s mouth. ‘You must make a contract with your horse,’ Commander Licart of the Cadre Noir liked to say. ‘He carries his head, and you carry your hands.’ And contrary to the old instructor’s maxim, a vertical line dropped from the rider’s head and passing through his hips will fall somewhat behind the heel, which is not only acceptable, but correct.”

Normal hands, and the normal way of holding a whip, as seen from above. Notice how the whip rests against the rider’s upper leg.
Photo – Alix Coleman from Reflections on Riding and Jumping.

Like George Morris, William Steinkraus absorbed the dual influences of the French school through the US Army, and the German thinking of the post War era, headed up by Bertalan de Némethy. He has an interesting slant on reconciling the two:

“German equestrian literature and much German teaching suggest that the hands should do no more than hold the reins, and that you should influence the horse almost entirely through your legs. The French, on the other hand, describe a wide variety of different rein effects and attach great importance to them, while acknowledging the importance of always supporting and coordinating them with the actions of the legs. The contradiction may be more apparent than real, because the best German riders use their hands a lot, even though their basic methods tend to presuppose the German type of horse that has less natural impulsion (therefore requiring stronger leg actions) than the Anglo-Arab and Selle Français strains preferred by the French, or the Anglo-American Thoroughbred. Having learned a lot from studying both approaches, I do not consider them impossible to reconcile. Good hands will be stable (rather than unsteady); interesting (rather than boring or stupid); refined (rather than crude or clumsy); and fair (rather than arbitrary or punitive).”

One thing William Steinkraus keeps from the French tradition is the dictum that once the horse is doing what you want it to do, you stop doing anything:

“I cannot stress too much the vital importance of restoring all aids to their normal state as soon as the horse has complied with them. Once the horse has gone forward, ease up on your driving aids; once it has shortened, open your fingers again enough to reward. It is very common to see exactly the opposite: the rider gets the horse to come back once, but never releases his closed fingers again, and spends the rest of the hour hanging in the horse’s mouth, or, having gotten the horse to go forward, spends the rest of the day with his legs stuck halfway through the horse. The reason you want your aids to be effective is so that you can teach the horse to respond to them more and more sensitively – and so that you can use them less and less. The old expression ‘crude but effective’ is thus a contradiction in terms as applied to riding; means aids that are truly effective are also economical, and economy is essentially attractive and never crude.”

Once again, in this philosophy, everything connects, flows through – or vice versa: “Let me emphasize again how essential a correct position of the hands, arms and shoulders is to the correct functioning of the hands. There can be no effective resistance if the hands are flat and the rider’s elbows cannot find support against his sides. Nor can there be light, elastic contact with the horse’s mouth if the rider’s elbow joints are locked in a position from which they cannot freely open and close. Flat hands that are forced low doom the rider to mediocrity, even though some teachers and even judges may consider them acceptable.”

In a perfect jump, the rider should feel that he does nothing at all in the way of jumping or trying to ‘lift’the horse off the ground when the horse jumps. He should simply sit in the middle of the horse and let the horse fold him up, while trying to maintain the same contact with the horse’s mouht in the air that he had leaving the ground. Here on Riviera Wonder Photo – Peter Winants from Reflections on Riding and Jumping.

Think about all the riders you see with their lower legs way back and pressing against the horse, simply because those riders haven’t got their horse ‘on the aids’. Count the number of times you see a rider trying to execute shoulder in, with their inside leg ten centimetres behind the girth, in other words, with their inside leg in the position their outside leg should be. They should all memorize Mr Steinkraus’ advice:

“The progression of escalating aids goes like this: light added calf pressure; stronger added calf pressure; touch with the heel; touch with the spur; hard punch with the spur. If nothing is happening at this point, reinforce the leg with the whip… Note that the leg does not normally move back to become active, except when it is being used as a lateral aid of some kind. In fact, if anything, the opposite should be true, but the further back the leg goes, the weaker its position. Sometimes, when you really need a very strong leg in an emergency, it’s a good idea to reach back softly with both legs and then bring them very vigorously forward, thus finishing in a strong position instead of a weak one. Many riders, especially in dressage, get into the habit of constantly tapping with their legs or spurs, believing that they’re doing the horse a favour by supporting its forward movement. What they are really doing, however, is telling it: ‘Ignore my leg – it will go on tapping, no matter what you do, so you may as well pretend it isn’t there.’”

For anything beyond a strong canter, the rider will usually prefer a half-seat. If he is sitting in balance, there should be no need to rest his hands on the horse’s neck, but in either case, the half-seat should be clean, with no posting to the canter. Photo – Peter Winants from Reflections on Riding and Jumping.

Now to that crucial yet much neglected aid – the back:

“The back is the most difficult and even controversial aid to try to pin down, yet it is also the most critical one, and can exert a decisive influence on the other natural aids in both positive and negative ways. The key to the correct action of the back is variable elasticity, and the horse will tell you when the action is correct and when it is wrong. When it is correct, you are able to use less and less hand and leg until the horse seems to read your thoughts and respond to your back alone. When it is wrong, neither hand nor leg seems to have any real influence, and it takes a big effort to produce any response at all.”

I can remember the German trained American dressage rider, Lisa Wilcox telling me how important the stomach was in her riding technique, and interestingly, Bill Steinkraus’ use of the ‘back’ also seems to involve the stomach: “First I stretch up slightly, tightening my abdominal muscles as well as those that support the lower spine; then I push everything below the waist a bit forward, while drawing the shoulders and everything above the waist slightly back. It helps if the rider takes a deep breath before starting to use the back, for this by itself tends to make you sit taller and expands your chest while supporting the small of the back.”

Once again, over-use the aid and you end up in trouble:

“Once a rider discovers that he can influence the horse with his back he often becomes so intoxicated with the effect that he insists of continually ‘coming through’ with it, and forgets ever to reward the horse. This eventually teaches horses to defend themselves, and some learn this lesson all too well. Trying to reform a horse that has learned to stiffen its back as a defence against the rider’s rigid seat and back can be a daunting task. And sad to say, many fine riders have ended their years with serious back problems that originated, I suspect, in trying to make too much of a good thing. Once you learn to use the back, try to refine your use of this wonderful aid by seeing how little of it you can get by with instead of how much, and encourage the horse to release its back by letting yours swing with it as often as you can.”

And don’t forget the voice:

“Every rider should also have a ‘cluck’ that works on every horse. When I give a loud cluck, I want my horses to move forward immediately. It’s easy to train them to do this simply by clucking and hitting them with a stick at the same time until the desired response is there, and then refreshing their memory from time to time. The beauty of a cluck is that, like ‘whoa’ it can be used in varying intensities, and without changing the other aids.”

In Australia, Bill Steinkraus would return over and over to musical metaphors. Trotting over a rail on the ground was like playing a C major scale on the violin, to do it very perfectly with a beautiful tone is both very simple and very difficult.

“Trotting poles are the building block for the whole of the horse’s life, not just an exercise. We are teaching the scale a note at a time, as it were, not expecting perfection at the beginning, but working towards perfections right from the beginning. We’ll go from the rails to gymnastic exercises, using grids, but at every stage we insist on the quality of performance not the height. If the style is there, and the foundation is solid, then height takes care of itself.”

It’s a philosophy of training that William Steinkraus absorbed from the great Bertalan de Némethy whose job it was to mould the ‘seat of their pants’ US riders into a team capable of handling European courses – and mixing it with the European teams.

WILLAIM STEINKRAUS

He was the first American jumping rider to win an Olympic individual gold medal – at Mexico City in 1968! From 1951 through to 1972, Steinkraus was a key member of the US team, competing in six Olympics, sharing team bronze in 1952 and team silver in 1960 and 1972.
William Steinkraus has also played a key administrative role in equestrian sport. He was elected president of the USET in 1973, became its chair in 1983, and Chairman Emeritus in 1992. A director of the American Horse Shows Association for more than four decades, he’s judged at the Olympics, Pan American Games, World Championships and World Cup finals. He served as the president of the World Cup Committee for ten years.

And yes, William Steinkraus is another to have won that stepping stone to American jumping greatness – the Maclay Medal at Madison Square Garden in 1941.
Through all that, William Steinkraus never lost sight of the fact that there was more to the world than horses and jumps. As the former, USET rider, Hugh Wiley remarked: “He would think through a riding problem and always come up with an intelligent answer. After riding, he usually played his fiddle, read The Wall Street Journal or went to the opera.”

Sadly it would seem that Bill Steinkraus was another ‘missed opportunity’ for Australian jumping. Although on that 1983 visit to Australia he recognized that our riders were dealing with very much the same problems, from a shared heritage – and that we too rode Thoroughbreds – so far as I know, that clinic was a never to be repeated ‘one off’, how different the history of the sport might have been had he been persuaded to become a regular visitor to our shores…

FOUR SHOWJUMPING MASTERS – Part 1: George Morris

FOUR SHOWJUMPING MASTERS – Part 3: Bertalan de Némethy

FOUR SHOWJUMPING MASTERS: Part 4: Gordon Wright