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An interview with Chris Hector<\/h3>\nAn interview with Chris Hector<\/h3>\nSharon Ridgway is a familiar sight around the eventing scene, and while her competition career is in the wind-back mode, she is still full on in her search for eventing horses to meet the needs of her book full of clients. Sharon has sold many many horses here in Australia, and has also sold to international stars like William Fox-Pitt\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n This month Sharon explains what to do, and what not to do, in the search for your next horse.<\/p>\n How hard is it for you to find the \u2018right\u2019 eventer for someone?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s starts off with me getting enough information about the buyer. The more you can tell me, the better. Information is the thing, when it comes to finding an eventer \u2013 and this is the same for an international eventer or a lower level eventer for a local rider. To be honest, the international rider is a little easier because I am an avid watcher, so usually when they come to me to find them a horse, I have watched them a lot. I have an idea of what they like, what suits them, what they\u2019ve had success with. Finding local horses for grass roots riders, is a little harder because I rely on people telling me what they think they need.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf they are honest and surround themselves with good help \u2013 instructor, vet, etc \u2013 then they can come up with a set of criteria that helps me step them through the process and come out with a good result.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cInitially when people approach me and they are looking for a good horse, I want them to give me a wish list, and one of the things I say is \u2013 don\u2019t compromise too much on your wish list. It is much better to take your time, to try several horses, and wait months if that\u2019s what it takes, if you have made a wish list, there is usually a reason behind that. Some things you can compromise on, but if you like small horses, don\u2019t go and try something that is 17 hh, because you are not going to like what it feels like. If you hate mares, don\u2019t go and try one because there is every chance that won\u2019t work for you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf someone comes to me with their list, we try and work within that, that includes budget as well, so I am not sending them off on a wild goose chase trying something way out of their budget. Basically start with a good list, and surround yourself with good people that are going to help and advise you, especially if you are not so experienced. Generally, the experienced riders know exactly what they want, and they know what they can work with.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut the one thing I would say, regardless of what level of rider you are, be guided by the feel you get. If everybody tells you this is the perfect horse, and you get on, and you don\u2019t like what it feels like, don\u2019t buy it. Yes, you might be able to get it to go a little bit more the way you want it to go, but there is every chance that your first instinct is correct. On paper things have to tick all the boxes but then trust your feel.\u201d<\/p>\n How much access do you expect your sellers to give your buyers?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI think buyers should be allowed to try horses several times. There is no way you can tell on the first ride, you need to go back at least a second time, and the less experienced the rider, the more I would be encouraging him or her to try the horse again. A more experienced rider will probably be time poor and will have scheduled in just one day in Melbourne to try eight horses or something like that. For the less experienced riders, a genuine seller should be happy to take the horse to a different venue, be happy to let you bring your instructor to see the horse, all those things are really important to try and make sure the horse is the correct choice for you.\u201d<\/p>\n Try the horse over cross country fences?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cYes, if you are buying an eventer, you should know how it is going across country. You need to know it is not too strong, that it is honest and genuine. I would say any self-respecting seller will carefully guide that process, so their horse doesn\u2019t lose any confidence\u2026 maybe they hop on first and pop it over the fences, then put the rider on, so they can do the same. If the horse is genuine there is every chance it will put up with whatever the new rider is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n Are there many really full-on crooks out there?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t even start me on that. There are \u2013 sadly. Some people don\u2019t mean to be crooked, they just don\u2019t realize that the rider who is trying the horse is just not good enough to ride that horse. Maybe sometimes, without even knowing, people are misrepresenting horses. They might be some brave cowboy gung ho rider that just gets on, and the horse never stops with them, but maybe it\u2019s not the same for the average rider.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve just got to do your research. It is very easy these days to \u2018stalk\u2019 people, with Facebook, and all the results available on the internet, there is so much footage out there, that anyone with half a brain can Google and watch. Do your homework, do your research, be absolutely sure that the horse has already ticked a lot of your boxes before you go trying it, because you do hear some horror stories about people trying an unsuitable horse, and they move their leg the wrong way and the horse pelts them.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe main thing is be prepared to wait for the right horse to come along, don\u2019t be in a hurry. If someone is trying to twist your arm to buy something, there is probably a catch. Try the horse a couple of times, maybe go and watch it compete, then you are in a much safer situation.\u201d<\/p>\n Soundness, are you prepared to compromise on soundness if you want an older school-master?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI think there has to be a term \u2013 \u2018serviceably sound\u2019. If you are looking for a school-master, and your main purpose is to be safe and learn, there is every chance those horses are going to vet with some wear and tear. It\u2019s the degree \u2013 the horse still has to be sound enough to do the job you are buying it for. If you are buying your school-master to get two years out of it, and do your first one star junior at Melbourne, then that horse has to be serviceably sound to get you on that path. There are plenty of amazing horses that have failed to get to exactly the right home because they have vetted with some wear and tear.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s something you have to build into your expectations right at the beginning. If you are looking for a five year old, fancy young horse to take to three or four star level, don\u2019t compromise on soundness because it has a long road ahead of it, but if you are looking for something to learn on, that mum and dad want you to be safe on, then there is definitely a degree of wear you can live with. Look at the horse\u2019s history again, I go back to my stalking, if you stalk that horse and find even though it has wear and tear, it actually hasn\u2019t had any big breaks in its competition career, so therefore we can be pretty confident it is going to keep doing the job we want it to do.\u201d William Fox-Pitt and Macchiato\u00a0at Burghley Horse Trials 2010 \/ Photo: Lazy Photography<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019m coming off my pony I want to get into eventing, and I come to you \u2013 where do you go looking?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI think there\u2019s lot of different places you can look. Obviously I have a website that sells those types of eventers, but to be quite honest, it is the quietly for sale ones that I would sell far more of, than the ones on my website. That\u2019s no reflection on the horses on the website, but to be honest I\u2019ve got a list of people waiting for horses and I get a phone call from someone \u2013 I\u2019ve got a lovely two star horses that\u2019s thirteen now, I feel it\u2019s ready to go to a junior and teach someone else all the wonderful things it has taught me. Then I go straight to my list of people looking for horses, and that horse will never go near my website. The good ones absolutely sell by word of mouth and they often never get advertised. You need to be lucky, you need to be in the right place at the right time, and again, you need to surround yourself with all those people, like your coach, who will be keeping a lookout for you.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019ve done one star, couple of two stars, my horse is coming to the end of his career, I want something that will go three star, four star, and take me to the Olympic Games\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t rule out looking for those sorts of horses in the hands of professionals, because those guys are not made of money \u2013 they work very hard to keep up at the top end of the sport and they do sell perfectly talented, nice young horses along the way, because that\u2019s how they keep funding their top-end campaigns. In a perfect world, we\u2019d all love to find a horse that has been produced by an amateur, because there is always improvement there. There are genuinely honest horses that haven\u2019t been produced by those amazing professionals who do such a great job here in Australia, but if you are looking for a superstar, there\u2019s a good chance those top riders have put the horse through a very strict culling process already \u2013 they\u2019ve done half the job for\u00a0you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cObviously we are looking in a different budget range here\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Am I going to have to mortgage mum and dad\u2019s home here\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cProbably. I\u2019m not going to throw figures around, but this is the golden rule: pick a budget that you are comfortable with, and then spend a little bit more. I know that sounds like it is coming from an agent\u2019s point of view, and a Scottish agent at that, but you get what you pay for. If something has genuinely been started well, has plenty of talent, and vets well, you are going to have to pay for that, because otherwise, whoever has got it, will just keep going with it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt is rare now to come across some lucky find. If you are buying a horse that is already part the way up the grades, and it\u2019s got the ability to go on, that is going to cost you money but absolutely you get what you pay for in the eventing world. If something is cheap, there is a catch, there always is, it might have behavioral issues, or it might have a soundness issue. That is not to say that if you are in a lower budget range, you can\u2019t make that work, but it is much, much harder.\u201d<\/p>\n Breeding, are we interested in the horse\u2019s pedigree?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI think so, if you are looking at an upper level eventer, I think you want three quarters Thoroughbred. The only exception to that rule is that it is a little more about their body type, so if it was half Warmblood, half Thoroughbred but really much more of a Thoroughbred body type, that might not be a worry. The modern day Warmbloods have a much higher percentage of Thoroughbred. Go the website, Horsetelex, that will give you the \u2018blood\u2019 percentage of the Warmblood stallions, do some homework, work out how much blood is in them. You might look at it on paper, by a Warmblood out of a Thoroughbred, so it\u2019s 50%, no it is not it could be up to 80% Thoroughbred, especially if it is Selle Fran\u00e7ais or one of the modern types of Warmblood stallion. If its body shape is athletic and light and narrow, and it can gallop, it really doesn\u2019t matter what breed it is.\u201d<\/p>\n There are Thoroughbred and Thoroughbreds, are you looking for particular lines?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cTo find jumping blood, staying blood, and temperament, is definitely a lot harder in the Thoroughbreds, because they are not all bred to jump, they are not all bred to have a really trainable brain. There are all those fabulous old Thoroughbred lines that we have been following, Sir Tristrams all jumped, tricky temperament as a rule, the Family Ties were wonderful, the Brilliant Invaders could be hot but they all tended to jump, most of them didn\u2019t move very well, the Agricola line, the Vain horses, Star Kingdom, they are all the old lines, but there are also new ones.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Encosta Delagos are looking like they could turn into lovely eventers but they are also very expensive racehorses. With the pure Thoroughbreds, the worry is if the stallion\u2019s service fee was $250,000, they will have been tried to within an inch of their life\u2026 Soundness-wise you\u2019ve got to be a little more careful with the Thoroughbreds if they are incredibly well bred, because they would have had more of a go at racing, than some little badly bred slow racehorses that might be trialed and then off to a new career without even a race start.\u201d<\/p>\n How much racing can you tolerate?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cYou know my first advanced horse I had in Australia, had 81 starts, including winning seven point-to-points, and he took me three star until I sold him as a 14-year-old as Junior horse, he then brought the Junior up through the ranks, and came second in the 3-star at Gawler as a seventeen-and-a-half year old. He is possibly the exception to the rule, but I think with Thoroughbreds, if they are tough, they are tough, they were tough in racing, they\u2019ll be tough in eventing as well. If they were sound in racing, there is every chance that if they were going to break them, they would have.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn a perfect world, it is quite nice to get a horse that has had ten or so starts. A lot of it is a great education for them. If they have been with a good trainer who hasn\u2019t raced them too young, then they have been out, they have been hosed off a hundred times, they have been in a truck loads of times, they have been to the races. There is a lot of good education in racing that really doesn\u2019t go amiss. I would be guided by the vet if they had really raced a lot, as to how many years that has take off their life.\u201d Emily King and Brookleigh \/ Photo: Adam Fanthorpe<\/em><\/p>\n For your international super star customers, how do you find them a\u202fhorse?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThey are tricky to find because they are generally in the hands of people who know what they\u2019ve got \u2013 but most of the customers have got owners, so there are funds there. What I do is sit and watch and watch, and when I see something that I think is suitable for a particular rider, I\u2019ll approach the owner and say, I know your horse is probably not on the market, but have you thought about selling it? If they say, for a price I would, I go to the exact person I thought it was suitable for, and take it from there. They are generally horses that are out-and-going, and generally not for sale. Most of the horses I sell to top international clients are horses where I\u2019ve approached the owner, not that they\u2019ve approached me.\u201d<\/p>\n What have been the best ones you\u2019ve sold on the international market?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve sold eleven horses to William Fox-Pitt. I\u2019ve found two horses for Emily King, Mary King\u2019s daughter, one was already over in Europe, but another was a young horse from Australia, Loxley \u2013 he went to the European Young Rider championships and got a team gold medal there. William\u2019s horses were a range of horses, the only common dominator, is that he never sat on one of them before he bought it. He only saw one of them, a two-and-a-half year old, unbroken, that we free-schooled over a jump. We just did it all from video and trust, basically.\u201d<\/p>\n Why should I come to you \u2013 you are not doing this because you are a nice lady who wants to give me a horse\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI think what maybe sets me apart from the others is that I am not greedy. I\u2019m not overly hungry \u2013 I\u2019m passionate about it, I love doing what I am doing, there is nothing I love more than following the success of a combination that I\u2019ve put together. If it is not the right horse for that person, I\u2019ll be the one telling them about it. It is just not worth it for me, for it to go pear-shaped. I live here in Australia, I\u2019m surrounded by the people I sell horses to, and buy horses for, all the time, and for me it is more about a happy ending. Yes, it\u2019s lovely to make a little bit of money along the way, but it certainly isn\u2019t what drives me.\u201d<\/p>\n Interested in the breeding of eventers?<\/em><\/p>\n Breeding Eventers – Blood will out<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"william-fox-pitt-macchiato-dairy-farm\"](\"http:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/william-fox-pitt-macchiato-dairy-farm-lazy-photography.jpg\")
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