Christopher Bartle – Genius!
Christopher Bartle turned the German eventing team from a group who won the dressage and fell apart on the cross country, to a medal winning machine, strong in all three phases. The question when he was lured back home to mentor the Brits, was, could Christopher do it again?
The successes begin – Victory at the 2018 Worlds for the Great Britain: Ros Canter and Allstar B, Piggy French and Quarryquest Echo, Gemma Tattersall and Arctic Soul, Tom McEwen and Toledo de Kerser. (Photo Eric Knoll)
Then we saw at the Tokyo Games, and just a month or so later, at the European Championships, things are going well for the British Team, so the answer is a resounding YES!
Here’s how Christopher assessed his role soon after his appointment as British Coach…
What were the areas you had to address?
“The British have always been thought of as natural cross country riders, and what they needed to do was get their dressage better, and that also would improve their cross country skills. I can only say this as an outsider looking in, I felt that it was perhaps that aspect that was disappointing in terms of results. I could see that the dressage side of things had improved substantially but in the end it is won or lost on the cross country. So from my point of view, I was able to transport my rules for cross country riding to a new audience, who were very open to it.”
“My mother was very academic and translated a number of the classic dressage texts from French, and Hans von Blixen-Finecke, who was my primary trainer, had been an Olympic Three Day Gold Medallist in 1952 on Jubal, and the other horse he trained, Master Rufus, was ridden by Henri Saint Cyr in the dressage and also won a Gold Medal. Incredible. So that was drummed into me as a kid, that dressage is clearly a sport in its own right, but that dressage comes from the French word, dressur, which means to train, and all the movements we do in dressage have a rôle in equestrian sport outside dressage.”
“There is a dressage trainer that is right for eventing, and there is a dressage trainer who is not so good for eventing. You need someone who can combine the various elements of eventing, into the package. In my job with the British team, that’s what I want to do, work with the trainers, put across my philosophy to the trainers, and clearly to the riders as well. I want a triangular situation where I am the coach overall with the individual riders and their coaches.”
Dressage training in a classical sense is all about training a horse to carry itself, to be able to respond to the rider’s direction, but not to lose its initiative and not to lose its ability to be a true partner to the rider.”
Ros Canter and All Star at Tryon image Eric Knoll
But if if you go looking for your event horse, and say, first I must find a horse that moves like a dressage horse, or, I must find a horse that showjumps like a Grand Prix showjumper, then you are losing sight of what eventing is all about.”
Starring cross country for the Brits at the Euro Champs at Avenches –
Nicola Wilson and JL Dublin (FEI photo – Richard Juilliart)
Cross country rounds – you evaluate them as you would a dressage test?
“Absolutely – in terms of the rider’s communication with the horse, in terms of the horse’s response to the rider, the horse’s balance and self-carriage and the lines. Clearly when you come to a dressage test you can talk about flexion and bend’ expression, and so on, but so much is on the basics: the balance and the self-carriage, the straightness, the rhythm, the acceptance of the contact – all the scales of training apply as much to the cross country as the do the dressage test.”
Read much more from this master coach
Eventing Exclusive – The Way Forward with Christopher Bartle (2)