{"id":35314,"date":"2017-06-14T11:22:11","date_gmt":"2017-06-14T01:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/?p=35314"},"modified":"2017-07-10T12:02:16","modified_gmt":"2017-07-10T02:02:16","slug":"international-animal-health-rider-of-the-month-grace-kay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/2017\/06\/international-animal-health-rider-of-the-month-grace-kay\/","title":{"rendered":"International Animal Health Rider of the Month – Grace Kay"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Regular readers of THM will have met Grace Kay many times, but Grace Kay the dressage star, not Grace Kay the up-and-coming eventer.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Grace has starred in many of our articles with her trainer Miguel Tavora and it is one of the great delights of my life to sit in Miguel’s indoor and watch the two work. You can see Grace working with Miguel with her new eventing star, Celerity Park Farbege if you click<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Grace won the Aachen Challenge at the Victorian Festival of Dressage a couple of years back with her dressage horse, Karingal Jamiroquai. When she made to trip to Aachen, THM arranged for her to train with Wolfram Wittig in Germany \u00a0and Johan Hamminga in The Netherlands, and they both wrote to us saying what a delight it was to train such a beautifully trained and correct rider. Now with a win in the Off The Track CCI one star at the Saddleworld Melbourne International 3 Day Event, Grace and Fab are off in a new direction:<\/p>\n

“He’s a clever boy. He is nine now and starting to come into his own. I’m having an absolute ball riding him.”<\/p>\n

You have been spectacularly successful since you decided to go eventing…<\/em><\/p>\n

“We started about 18 months ago.”<\/p>\n

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Dressage at Werribee<\/em><\/p>\n

Has he had a cross country fault?<\/em><\/p>\n

“He has, most of them have been when I’ve buried him in something, or shot him out at something (I need to point out that Grace not only has the most amazing smile but that she tends to laugh a lot) <\/em>but nine times out of ten, if I get him somewhere where he thinks he can manage to get over it, he’ll do it for me.”<\/p>\n

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Have you won every dressage test?<\/em><\/p>\n

“We’ve been top three every time, there have been a few when we’ve been second, and once, third, but yes, unless something drastic happens, he is always up there.”<\/p>\n

You have always combined showjumping with his dressage career, what level was he showjumping?<\/em><\/p>\n

“When I decided I didn’t really want to go down that path, we’d just finished our Young Riders, so 1.30 was where we decided to play with the eventing.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Grace and Fab tackle the Werribee track…<\/em><\/p>\n

And what level dressage?<\/em><\/p>\n

“He’s had two Prix St Georges starts but he’s got most of the Inter 1 stuff – we play around with the piaffe and passage, but it is more just to give him something to do, not to push it.”<\/p>\n

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and conquer it, to stay on their dressage score!<\/em><\/p>\n

What made you decide to go eventing?<\/em><\/p>\n

“I’d always done a bit with my project ponies. I’d go out low levels with the young horses that were really spooky and offended by a lot of atmosphere – going to a Scone ODE where there are 600 horses in the warm up can be a really good thing for them. Then I took Fab out to some cross country schooling with Andrew Barnett, for that reason, a bit spooky, and we found that he was actually quite bold when you point him at something and went from there.”<\/p>\n

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And yes, they showjumped clear!<\/p>\n

Are you brave?<\/em><\/p>\n

“I wouldn’t say I was particularly brave but I have a large amount of trust in Faberge and a lot of respect for him as a horse and I know if I get him into a difficult position, then he is going to try and get me out and if he can’t get me over it, he will take me somewhere else, but safe.”<\/p>\n

Who is helping you with the eventing?<\/em><\/p>\n

“I’m still training with Andrew Barnett. We are in the same area, and he’s got a great set-up. He helped us a lot to begin with, and especially coming up to this event, he put in a lot of hours with us. It’s been very good.”<\/p>\n

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And you still train with Australia’s best dressage coach?<\/em><\/p>\n

“Absolutely, every time I go to Miguel’s, there’s new things that I find, we chat about stuff, and it is always such a nice experience. I love going down there.”<\/p>\n

How far do you think Fab can take you in the world of eventing? The WEG next year?<\/em><\/p>\n

“I don’t know about next year, I think I need a bit more experience, but I am looking at Tokyo. I probably need another horse, and more experience, but I definitely have belief in Fab that we can do it.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Young Australian dressage star, Grace Kay is taking on a new challenge – Eventing – and with a win in the One Star at Melbourne International she has started the new career in fine style…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":35326,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,5],"tags":[1244,663,1202,1332],"class_list":["post-35314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-eventing","tag-eventing","tag-grace-kay","tag-off-the-track","tag-rider-of-the-month"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35314"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35903,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35314\/revisions\/35903"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}