![\"WiganChantalPiroa1a\"](\"http:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/WiganChantalPiroa1a.jpg\")
Chris Hector reports…<\/h3>\nChris Hector reports…<\/h3>\nChantal Wigan sort of crept up on the Australian dressage scene. While you can see most riders maturing as they work their way through State Champs and National Championships, Chantal did her hard yards in Europe, emerging from seemingly nowhere in the run up to the Beijing Games with a Grand Prix horse, and some impressive performances. <\/strong><\/p>\n They missed Hong Kong, and then made another serious bid for the WEG team in Lexington. Once again it was a near miss, and this time, Chantal decided to bring her Dutch gelding, Ferero, back to Australia to show us what they could do. And wow, did they do that! With a series of wins in our top Grand Prix classes it became harder and harder for our dressage selectors to ignore the Queensland-based rider, eventually they were forced to include her in the Elite Squad.<\/p>\n The truth is that Chantal started out on her equestrian career, like lots of pony-mad kids, as a way of getting around:<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a great mode of transport \u2013 it was better than walking. We had a property and it was quicker to jump on the pony and head up the back paddock than walk. We moved there when we were about five.\u201d<\/p>\n You did the normal pony club thing\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWe did but Mum hated it. She couldn\u2019t quite bear the over-ambitious parent scene. We weren\u2019t allowed to go that often. If we wanted to go, we either had to hitch a ride, or leave quite early in the morning to get there at eight which was muster. It took about an hour for my sister and I to ride there, that was a lot of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDressage princess, I don\u2019t know about, but yes, I\u2019ve done a bit of everything\u2026 eventing, inter-school competitions, which were combined training, showjumping. I was about 12 and I had a broken down B grade showjumper to take me cross country, and he looked after me very well. I got up to restricted novice, but I couldn\u2019t go much further because the horses weren\u2019t suitable. I couldn\u2019t stop them, that was the problem. They all jumped but my Mum said, enough is enough – when you\u2019ve got the stewards there at Figtree Pocket, waving their clipboards frantically at the finish, trying to slow me up. There was no slowing that horse I had. Mum said, that\u2019s too dangerous. So I evented until I was seventeen.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAfter that I did some non-horsey training, decided after three years I didn\u2019t like that, and it was definitely going to be horses. Mum said, if you are going to do horses, you are going to do it properly, and you can\u2019t do it in this country: there\u2019s no industry and no training. That was 1994, she packed my bags and sent me off to England to do my BHS \u2013 AI [British Horse Society, Assistant Instructor]. I was in training to do my Intermediate when an opportunity came up to go to Rudolf Zeilinger\u2019s training stable in Germany.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI went there for a weekend to see if he would take me on. He did, and I stayed there for two years.\u201d<\/p>\n That was when it was a bit of an Aussie outpost\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cRicky MacMillan was there with Crisp, we also had a couple of horses, Dom Edin and Dom Perignon both from Australia.\u201d \uf075<\/p>\n \u201cI suppose so, but Zeilinger still had the problem that most of them still have, they don\u2019t have riders that know about horses. I\u2019d grown up with ex-racehorses, horses that weren\u2019t so easy, so my talents were quite useful. I had ridden up to Medium level dressage for my British exams, and I had a horse on lease for 12 months that was a medium dressage horse, so I wasn\u2019t completely new to it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI do still remember my first day at Zeilinger\u2019s, with my milk teeth showing. I had gone there for a trial. I stood for three hours at the gate watching until finally they said, you can go and ride something. I gingerly got ready. As I was getting ready one of the American girls said, whatever you do \u2013 it has to be done quickly, don\u2019t take too long. There was a set routine. I guess Zeilinger always looked for people who were smart enough to pick up on what was happening before they had to be told. So if you\u2019d stood there and watched three horses, and you hadn\u2019t seen anyone do rising trot, then best not to come out and do rising trot, long and low. You pick up what you see, and then go and do exactly as you have seen.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a great big bay Warmblood there that was beautiful, and I was standing at the gate watching, it was doing passage, I said to myself \u2013 I want to do that. That horse is beautiful, that reminds me of all the carousel ponies I\u2019ve ever seen. I\u2019m going to learn how to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI watched a few more riders, and by day two, I\u2019d ridden a few more horses. Rudolf Zeilinger came up to me and said, you need to get on this horse, and you need to do flying changes. That was great for an eventing rider who had only ever done a single flying change, and even in a medium test, it is a single change. So I just applied the leg and kept counting \u2013 my counting was everywhere\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n You still get it wrong occasionally\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIt has stayed with me! Anyway I managed to stumble through. The next day I rode three horses, all different, I\u2019d gone through all the medium movements, done a few changes, then he rode up and said, now you need to passage. Shit! How do I do that? Okay, I\u2019ve seen everyone else, click the tongue, close the leg and apply a half halt. Something happened and it was resembling a passage, we went for a whole long side and then I walked, and he said, why are you walking? I thought the horse was tired. No, you are tired. Now you will do piaffe\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe was right beside me on another horse, that was probably where he did most of his thinking, and as an instructor, he was better on a horse beside you than sitting on a chair. He said, now you make a piaffe. So I did what I saw everyone else doing, held the contact a little more, closed the contact, clicked, with the whip a little, and the horse piaffed.\u201d Easy peasey\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cEasy peasey, I thought, well this isn\u2019t so hard. No, I really knew it was really hard. On day three I got chronic food poisoning, German food poisoning is quite easy to get, and I ended up not being able to attend stable duties and just made it to my plane that evening to go back to England.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe rang and offered me a job \u2013 when can you start? I said, \u2018I\u2019m working in England at the moment as a Yard Manager, and I will have to give them a month\u2019s notice as I\u2019ve just started eight weeks ago.\u2019 I gave notice and I spent two years with Rudolf Zeilinger.\u201d<\/p>\n Was that tough?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cVery tough. It was character building. You learn to do your work efficiently, and you have to get accustomed to the level of tough on the horse \u2013 that took a lot for me to get used to. Rudolf came from Willi Schultheis and a very old way of training horses. It\u2019s not a method that adapts to any of those things like physiotherapy, or massage or magnetic things \u2013 feeding, the feeding style is still what it was when Schultheis was training, which was oats, oats and more oats. That is their diet. They don\u2019t worry about horses getting out of stables, they only come out once a day to be ridden and they leave their horses in the stables all day on Sunday, which used to kill me, and they would not take the horses out.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you start you are riding one, two, three horses, eventually you are riding twelve horses a day, and doing less stable work, which is what I did. It\u2019s an invaluable lesson, you don\u2019t get a feeling by riding one or two horses, you can\u2019t read it, you just have to do it.\u201d Chantal and Rivergold; the horse she took out to Germany<\/em><\/p>\n So then you came back to Australia?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI did, I\u2019d been kicked by one of the stallions and like any good foreign worker you don\u2019t claim on the owner\u2019s insurance, but before I came back, my mother said, go back to England and finish your exams and get your qualification for teaching. I went back to a riding centre in the UK, and jumped straight into where I left off, to come home with my qualifications.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI arrived back in 1997, and started finding horses off the track and training them up to do dressage with them. I did a lot of teaching. We took over the Riding School in 2001 \u2013 we later shut that because I couldn\u2019t find quality staff willing to do the seven day week that horses demand. I sold the horses, and in 2006, went back to Europe, back to Rudolf Zeilinger. I had worked very hard with a not-so-talented horse, Rivergold. Beautiful temperament but just lacking the ability to get to international Grand Prix. I took him over to Germany, he was an Australian Warmblood horse by the American stallion, Riverman, a Holsteiner. I took him to Rudolf because that was the system I had been training him with, right from the start. I sold him after I bought Ferero.\u201d<\/p>\n Where did you find Ferero?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cHe was in Warendorf, Rudolf helped find him. Against all my better judgement, he convinced me that although the horse didn\u2019t have a great super trot, he would get me in the international ring, not for Germany, not for Holland, but certainly for Australia or any other country, just not the big two. He was nine years old, he\u2019d had a bit of work. He\u2019d only competed in Holland, he\u2019d had some time off. He was at Advanced level. I stayed with Rudolf for four months after I bought him. Then I decided there had to be an approach that was a bit more rounded, a system that used some of the things I\u2019d applied in my own training when I wasn\u2019t under Rudolf\u2019s supervision \u2013 because I\u2019d made many trips back, every year I would go back for three or four weeks training with him. It\u2019s great if you have a good rapport with a trainer, you can go back for brush-ups without taking your own horse.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always tried to stay true to a training system, a training system is not something you pick up on one horse, it is something you\u2019ve applied over the years on many different horses\u2026\u201d Chantal and Ferero in Europe<\/em><\/p>\n When did you ride your first Grand Prix with Ferero?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThat was a national class in 2007. I was still based in Germany \u2013 I rode my two national shows to get my qualification to ride internationally, and I did that in 2008 on the Sunshine Tour. The two national starts were very successful, and I guess we shocked Rudolf \u2013 he thought it was going to take a little longer to gel. He sent me off to my very first show with Ferero in Germany, at Grand Prix, by myself \u2013 something only Zeilinger could do\u2026 I\u2019m not very proficient at reading German, I can certainly understand it, and order my meals, and for my first event, he had entered me in a Grand Prix which required you to come back and ride a K\u00fcr the next day.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI ended up having to forfeit the \u20ac600 I won for 4th or 5th, because I couldn\u2019t ride in the K\u00fcr leg. I scored 65% and everyone was so excited for us, they said, oh my god the K\u00fcr, and I said, oh my god, I\u2019ve got no music! I rang Rudolf, and he said, no problem I\u2019ll give you one of my old ones, I think it will fit, here\u2019s the DVD, here\u2019s the music. So I was in a panic that night, sat there trying to learn the K\u00fcr, and at one in the morning I was told, enough is enough, you need to go to bed because otherwise you won\u2019t be fit to do anything even if you do work out the music. I got up in the morning and starting listening to it again, I was supposed to be back that night at 7 pm, by two in the afternoon, I decided to abort the whole project, it was just going to be a mess. Better to quit while I was ahead. That was the beginning of Rudolf and I going head to head, he hadn\u2019t prepared me, he should have known better \u2013 you expect a bit more of people when you have given them more than they have given you back. That\u2019s where it started to unravel\u2026\u201d Competing in Europe with Ferero<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI had to start thinking about different approaches. Ferero was quite tight in the back from the method of training, and I wanted to explore other methods. I decided it was time to move on and seek further education if I wanted to become a better Grand Prix rider and a trainer. I\u2019d been looking around, and I guess I tend to pick a rider, which is not always the best method because a good rider is not necessarily a great teacher. I knew many Grand Prix riders and their stables and I was a little wary of going into another commercial sales barn. I didn\u2019t want that because they don\u2019t usually produce the best Grand Prix horses. I did some more research and I went to many interviews and looked at many stables, and watched their coaching methods with international students, then I came across the Bartels family and they seemed to be what I was looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI spent two and a half years with them.\u201d<\/p>\n Did you have to adjust your system coming from Zeilinger?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI did. I went there in January 2008 with the aim of going to Hong Kong later in the year. They said it\u2019s a hard push but probably you can do it. You\u2019ve got the horse, it is just a matter of getting around and doing as many tests as you can \u2013 get your MES [minimum elegibility scores]. I did that, and the Hong Kong saga is all behind me now. I didn\u2019t go, but it is always an eye opener when you are the new kid on the block, unfortunately you\u2019ve got to do your time even though I considered my time had been done, but it wasn\u2019t done enough in Australia \u2013 because in Australia I had only ridden at Prix St Georges level and that\u2019s where everyone thought I was. They didn\u2019t realise that I had done so many years in Europe, training all levels of horses, including Grand Prix horses.\u201d \u201cSo from January to October 2008, we didn\u2019t change the training program very much \u2013 mainly Imke Bartels taught me, but Tineke Bartels was there when she was away, they are a good combination with the experience they both offer. It\u2019s a good place to go if you are serious about training, and they don\u2019t sell, it\u2019s very hard to get them to find you a horse \u2013 they will find one if you are really looking but they don\u2019t have horses there that are constantly being tried by new customers, or horses that clients take away at the weekend and then it is your job to repair them for the next show.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAfter I gave up on Hong Kong, then I did get serious about using their approach, and even though I had been watching it in action for eight months, it probably took another six months, maybe longer, to adapt it to my training. There was a period of six months when I did not ride and Imke competed the horse for me, I was so disappointed that I needed a break. Imke was kind enough to take him on the international circuit and that kept the horse\u2019s competition record up. I would certainly trust her fully with any horse of mine\u2026\u201d But wait, there were more disappointments to come\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThere are always disappointments with horses, and everything that goes with them\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n The next big event you didn\u2019t get selected for was Lexington\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIt does go on, but I think I was a little more braced for that. It\u2019s also understanding the selection criteria because I had read the criteria as meaning as long as I got my MES, that I would be in contention. That\u2019s what I understood, and that\u2019s what I\u2019d been lead to believe, once you go into it a little further, it is not the MES that counts. You have to already be on a squad, either an A or B squad, and then if you read further, you find they will only take you if you are on the elite squad.\u201d<\/p>\n What made you decide to pack up and come home?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cForemost are financial and family reasons, that brings anyone home quickly to Australia. It is much cheaper living here, I don\u2019t pay for agistment, and I don\u2019t have accommodation costs, double car rental. I would have loved to stay in Europe and if I was 20 years old and had what I had now, there would be no way you\u2019d get me on a plane back to Australia. We are self-funded, we have no sponsorship yet, so I had to come home and re-start money generating projects.\u201d<\/p>\n But that was a pretty successful move; you come home to Australia and start winning the big Grand Prix\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cYes. I wouldn\u2019t have expected much less. I\u2019d say I have an advantage over most of the Australian riders because of the amount of tuition I\u2019ve had over the years from extremely good instructors. Then you get down to basic talent, the inner horse person, and I have an understanding of what the horse is telling me, and that is more important than just going out riding. And I\u2019ve got the horse.\u201d What sort of a person is Ferero?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cQuirky, really quirky. He\u2019s an extremely hot horse by nature, but quite a lazy horse on the other hand. He lights up quite well with music, especially indoor music. He\u2019s much easier to ride<\/p>\n in an outdoor environment than he is indoors. I train indoors and outdoors at home with him, but he is a typical Ferro, he goes from calm to off the Richter scale at a volcanic level, as a rider you have to not be affected by those things \u2013 especially as he showed at Werribee, he can toss in a buck just before he goes in the ring. It doesn\u2019t faze me those little things.\u201d<\/p>\n You have won at Werribee, that\u2019s three CDI-W wins in a year \u2013 what happens next?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWe go home, I\u2019ve got quite a big clinic program to keep me going. We will give him a little rest after the big trip down and we will be back in Sydney for the Nationals, Equitana, then hopefully claim our trip to the World Cup final in Europe next year.\u201d<\/p>\n This article first appeared in the November 2011 issue of THM.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"Chantal](\"http:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Chantal-Old-Photos-002.jpg\")
You did a bit of eventing before you became a dressage princess?<\/em><\/p>\n![\"Chantal](\"http:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Chantal-Tigre-Old-Photos-004.jpg\")
Was that a big shock? Zeilinger as I understand it, is a relatively theoretical trainer, and all you had was the good old BHS?<\/em><\/p>\n![\"Chantal](\"http:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Chantal-early.jpg\")
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