{"id":45920,"date":"2019-04-29T15:04:20","date_gmt":"2019-04-29T05:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/?p=45920"},"modified":"2019-05-01T11:54:13","modified_gmt":"2019-05-01T01:54:13","slug":"kentucky-winner-oliver-townend-not-afraid-to-speak-his-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/2019\/04\/kentucky-winner-oliver-townend-not-afraid-to-speak-his-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"Kentucky Winner, Oliver Townend – Not afraid to speak his mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

Interview – Chris Hector<\/h1>\n

A couple of years ago, British star Ollie Townend rode at Adelaide 4 star, winning the three star event on Napoleon, I found him a great interview…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It\u2019s too easy, they just pop you on a plane, pop you off, toss you on a pony and you win the class\u2026
\n<\/em>\u201cI wish it was that easy, or I wish it felt that easy. I\u2019ve just enjoyed myself full stop. It\u2019s been my first time in Australia. I\u2019ve been out here with good friends, Tim Boland and his girlfriend, Sophie Adams, and I\u2019ve just had the most amazing two weeks of my life, it\u2019s just fantastic. I\u2019ve done Sydney, I\u2019ve come here \u2013 it hasn\u2019t felt like eventing because normally I\u2019ve got a lot of pressure, I\u2019ve put the time in myself, I need to produce a result for owners that back me, or sponsors, or investors. And here I\u2019ve just come and had a whale of a time and luckily the result has been good at the end of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking at the British eventing scene, do you think they will give the coaching job to Christopher\u00a0Bartle?
\n<\/em>\u201cI think he will hopefully have a r\u00f4le. I\u2019m a big fan of Christopher\u2019s, he was my first boss. I think it would be a great opportunity for all involved, especially Christopher to have a second go at trying to manage me.\u201d Ollie is laughing wildly \u2013 \u201cHopefully it will last longer than it did the first time, but I was only seventeen then.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A visitor takes out the 3***, Oliver Townend riding Tim Boland\u2019s Napoleon<\/em><\/p>\n

It is a bit of a puzzle though, we all look at the UK and say well there\u2019s the best sport, the best courses, the best owners, the best structure,\u00a0 wads of money from the lottery, and yet the British team continues to rely on a few increasingly aged riders, with very modest success\u2026
\n<\/em>\u201cI don\u2019t think it does me any good to tell you my true feelings about the situation, but having said that, you say it\u2019s the best structure, it can\u2019t possibly be the best structure, because we have all the events, a phenomenal number of horses, a phenomenal amount of riders, and the system hasn\u2019t worked for a long time now. I don\u2019t really want to get into it now, I think we should be looking to the future. There should have been a clean sweep in 2012, that was a missed opportunity, but there is no point in looking back, let\u2019s hope the good guys get the positive feel back and move forwards.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does your selection process have a nominated series of selection events leading up to a Games or a WEG, or is it totally subjective judgment of the selectors?
\n<\/em>\u201cAgain you are pressing all my right buttons, but I don\u2019t want to get into it too much, but for me, the selection from a rider\u2019s point of view \u2013 not the selection of the team in the end \u2013 but the long lists that appear have no resemblance to current form whatsoever \u2013 so is it a straight job? You answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Surprise, surprise, Ollie was left out of the WEG team, but here he is back to back winning Kentucky Rolex 4 star on Cooley Master Class…<\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cI have had him (Cooley Master Class) since he was a four-year-old, he knows me, and I know him very well. He loved it here last year, he thrived, his ears were pricked every step of the way, so why not bring him back to somewhere he loves.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

British Eventing superstar, Oliver Townend takes out his second Kentucky 4 star – but out of the saddle, Ollie is also happy to tell it like he sees it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45925,"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":[1244,1945,1944],"class_list":["post-45920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-eventing","tag-eventing","tag-kentucky-rolex","tag-oliver-townend"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45920","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45920"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45930,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45920\/revisions\/45930"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}