{"id":45219,"date":"2019-03-05T18:01:18","date_gmt":"2019-03-05T07:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/?p=45219"},"modified":"2023-10-03T11:52:52","modified_gmt":"2023-10-03T00:52:52","slug":"carl-hester-talks-about-nip-tuck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/2019\/03\/carl-hester-talks-about-nip-tuck\/","title":{"rendered":"Carl Hester talks about Nip Tuck"},"content":{"rendered":"

Talking about Nip Tuck with Carl Hester<\/em><\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Barney is not sure about the photographer<\/em><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s talk about Nip Tuck \u2013 There must have been dozens of horses that you have started that look more glamorous, that move more brilliantly, that never made Grand Prix. How important is what you can\u2019t see, what\u2019s inside?
\n<\/strong><\/em>\u201cGood point, that horse proves it all doesn\u2019t he? Over 25 years at championship level with different horses, and that one still taught me a great lesson. His owner Jane de la Mare is a really good friend of mine, she was a groom at Dr B\u2019s\u00a0(Dr Bechtolsheimer, father of Laura and owner of Carl\u2019s Barcelona Olympic ride, Giorgione)<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>when I was a rider there. So this is a good partnership between the three of us. We started at the bottom, Jane and I together. She\u2019s from the Channel Islands too. When I got the horse, Nip Tuck was nothing on the way up, but I always said, \u2018I know he will do a Grand Prix\u2019, that\u2019s all I could say\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

How did you know that?
\n<\/strong><\/em>\u201cYou know when you ride him. You can ride that horse in a pair of slippers, it just wants to go. You don\u2019t have to ride with a whip or spurs, nothing. The sensitivity is there, and if you touched him with a whip, the horse was like, right, I\u2019m going to piaffe. That was a natural thing for him to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Competing at the Europeans in 2014<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI said, I think I can teach him everything. Last year, when he got to Grand Prix I said, he\u2019s not going to be good enough. Jane said, oh please do a Grand Prix with him before we sell him. I said, we\u2019ll go down the road where no one goes. We went to a back-of-beyond Grand Prix, and the blooming horse gets 77%. He was as green-as-a-leek.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Spooking at the scary scoreboard at the Europeans in 2015<\/em><\/p>\n

When I came out, I said, I can\u2019t believe it, he was pretty tense last year, he\u2019s a very hot horse, and January \/ February is not a good time of the year for him because he\u2019s not in the field as much as I\u2019d like.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But still tried his hardest in the test…<\/em><\/p>\n

I said that\u2019s unbelievable \u2013 the horse is so tense, but he tries his absolute hardest not to make a mistake, he\u2019s doing what I said.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n\u201cI know physically it is demanding for him, he\u2019s got a long back, his hind legs were naturally always out, he didn\u2019t really have a walk because he was so tight, he didn\u2019t really have a canter because he was so tense and always trying to run off \u2013 and his trot had to be developed. Everything that goes in a Grand Prix has helped make him a better horse. Once he learnt a canter pirouette, he started to take the weight back in canter, once he learnt to passage, the trot started to develop because before he had no lift, no nothing. It has just been a great lesson for me and I am delighted that I have been proved wrong, because it helps you in so many ways. It helps you as a trainer, because instead of saying to somebody, oh your horse is not good enough, now I say, well actually I tried this, I tried that, let\u2019s see if we can develop something with your horse. Obviously on a personal level, every horse I get up to this level is a challenge for me, and that\u2019s what I do it for. I love the opportunity to get a horse up to this level.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

After the 2016 Rio Games
\n<\/em><\/strong>\u201cHe can\u2019t retire! If he can come seventh at the Olympics, I\u2019m not stopping now. First of all, I would like that horse just to prove a point, come on \u2013 no hind legs, no paces, you can do it. We can do a bit better. I\u2019ve ridden some great horses in my life, but I enjoy riding that horse the most, I really do. Sitting on Barney, I\u2019m riding presence, going round today, you are sitting behind a neck like that, and he starts to go, and when he\u2019s more relaxed and starts to use his body like he was today. In the Grand Prix he was so nervous, but today when his body moves, his hind legs don\u2019t look so much not part of him. Honestly you sit there, and he is so lovely in my hands, when I have him really light and on his hind legs, it\u2019s just the best feeling, the feeling of changing something\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t that supposed to be what dressage is about\u2026<\/strong>
\n<\/em>\u201cI know we say that Chris, but not every horse is capable of it. If we all trained with the rules and the blocks of the training scale\u2026 I haven\u2019t been able to put those blocks in place with that horse. The contact came as he has got more on his hind legs, some things have been back-to-front a little bit with him. That\u2019s alright.\u201d
\n\u201cThat\u2019s what makes me laugh when you get his critics saying,\u00a0he should be more sitting, he should be this or that<\/em>\u2026 Well, I started with no walk, no trot and no canter, that\u2019s what I started with, Valegro started with all three paces.\u201d
\n\u201cThat\u2019s training, it does show that you can create something in every horse that has the willingness to work \u2013 it won\u2019t be of the same quality, but it is something you can still make.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s interesting because Nip Tuck is one of my most favorite horses I\u2019ve ever ridden in my life, and I really look forward to riding him all the time. I just love the generosity of the horse\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Breeding your own dressage star in Australia? You can choose from a large range of the best bloodlines in the world: go to<\/strong><\/em> www.ihb.com.au<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Bonhoffer<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Escaneno<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carl Hester on dressage: \u201cThat\u2019s training, it does show that you can create something in every horse that has the willingness to work \u2013 it won\u2019t be of the same quality, but it is something you can still make.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":45233,"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":[81,4],"tags":[953,686,1317],"class_list":["post-45219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-dressage","tag-carl-hester","tag-dressage-trainiing","tag-nip-tuck"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45219","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=45219"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67183,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45219\/revisions\/67183"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}