{"id":54831,"date":"2020-06-30T18:05:21","date_gmt":"2020-06-30T08:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/?p=54831"},"modified":"2022-06-15T14:36:14","modified_gmt":"2022-06-15T04:36:14","slug":"happy-birthday-carl-hester","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/2020\/06\/happy-birthday-carl-hester\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday Carl Hester!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thoughts and memories of a horseman<\/h2>\n

Starting with negative memory of Aachen, just to show everything hasn’t always gone perfectly for Carl:<\/h1>\n

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Looking fine here<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve actually been last at Aachen, I hold that record. In 2004 on Escapado, that walk of shame, coming out of A, to go back through the entrance and to the stables, is probably one of the longest walks I\u2019ve ever walked, with that damn horse jogging the whole way back, foaming and so over-excited.”<\/p>\n

The next year, the pair were selected for the World Cup in Las Vegas,<\/p>\n

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2011, and the Rotterdam Europeans with Uthopia<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s some pics of Carl, the one where he is rubbing his head is when he has seen his score.<\/p>\n

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He said in an interview with THM after the test, when the whole audience gave a collective OOOh, as he finished his extended trot diagonal which could be heard all around the arena.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI thought for a minute that there must be a dog in the arena, or a bird had landed, everyone was laughing after the first ‘OOH’. I didn\u2019t know I had seven 10s.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Nip Tuck<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Nip Tuck, he made it all the way to Rio in 2016<\/em><\/p>\n

“When he got to Grand Prix I said, he\u2019s not going to be good enough. Jane, his owner 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. 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

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Always ready to spook, Nip Tuck doesn’t like the look of the photographer<\/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

story continues below the advertisement<\/em><\/p>\n

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George Morris tells his\u00a0<\/strong>showjumping pupils…<\/b><\/p>\n

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\u201cWhy is Carl Hester such a marvelous horseman? No matcho. Strong, but subtle \u2013 no matcho. Wait for the horse. Matcho doesn\u2019t wait for the horse \u2013 matcho is not horse training.\u201d<\/p>\n

2013 and the Euros at Herning:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Hasn\u2019t it been nice at these championships, the riding at the top, Helen is another exquisite rider\u2026 dressage BC \u2013 before Charlotte and Carl \u2013 wasn\u2019t so nice\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a great compliment (he is chuckling)\u00a0<\/em>but we as riders are ultimately responsible for our sport, and the negative press we\u2019ve received \u2013 probably justifiably so in some cases – needed eradicating, if what we do is to be worth emulating by young people. It was a definite plan to ride like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

And you don\u2019t need horses with steam coming out of their nostrils and fear in their eyes for dressage to be exciting\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u201cThe test of balance for a brilliant rider is power and softness, that\u2019s the hallmark of a brilliant rider, and both Helen (Langehanenberg) and Charlotte (Dujardin) have the ability to achieve that balance, and that is the beauty of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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What do you look for when you are selecting a prospect? And Carl and a young Valegro demonstrate – pic K Sparrow\u00a0<\/em>photography\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

“We don’t need to worry about the trot, what we need is a good walker and a good canter, we need that hind-end engine, that’s what we really need. It’s the mechanics of the hind end. You’ve got to know when you are looking at a walk, how will that walk make a piaffe? And you’ve got to know when you are looking at a trot, how will that trot make a passage? Then when you are looking at the canter, how will that canter make a flying change and a pirouette? Those are the visions you need to have when you are looking at a young horse for the future.”<\/p>\n

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K. Sparrow Photography<\/em><\/p>\n

Can we talk about positive tension? It seems like a very weird concept\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhere it tips over, that positive tension, is if you let the horse get strong in the bridle. Once you let the horse become heavy on the hand and strong in the bridle, it\u2019s not positive any more, because then there is a block. If you can create what we try to create, without heavy hands, without hanging onto the rein, if you can do it with self-carriage, then it looks beautiful. It\u2019s this word, expression, which is a dangerous word because once you put expression into it, like heightened suspension and things like that, then if you have got the wrong rider, or a rider who doesn\u2019t ride with an independent seat, then they use their hands and that\u2019s when you get that horrible looking, jerky dressage. It is something we really work on, to be able to create it, without going over-board.\u201d<\/p>\n

And self-carriage?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cSelf-carriage is really easy to see. It\u2019s that tension into the hand that we were just talking about with Valegro, that really tells it \u2013 it\u2019s the first place you see it through the whole of the top line of the horse. The best thing you can do for self-carriage is the give and re-take of the reins. It is amazing how you forget to do that when you ride on your own. That constant giving the hand, taking, giving, taking, making sure that the outline is stable, the mouth is soft. You only have to look at the mouth to know how it is working, the horse is carrying its own head and neck. People that ride on their own, it can be something that they forget they are doing, people put in too much power and that\u2019s why they find self-carriage difficult, and I always think you\u2019ve got to create a balance and then put power in, that way around.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Pic DigiShots<\/em><\/p>\n

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

There was a local young horse championship and Delicato was third, and he went cantering past me with this hind leg like so high up! \u00a0He\u2019s Diamond Hit \/ Regazzoni, and he has a hind leg like Diamond Hit in canter. If you describe to someone what an extended trot looks like, it is very easy to do, but when you say to someone what is an extended canter, lot\u2019s of people think you just go flat out from one end to the other.<\/p>\n

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Charlotte has a ride<\/em><\/p>\n

But a horse with a good hind leg, they go up first, and then they cover the ground, then up again, and cover the ground, and it is because the push sends them up rather than being on the forehand all the time. So many extended canters come on the forehand whereas the horses with a hind end like my new one, pushes them up. He\u2019s a gorgeous horse, he looks like a show horse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dear Carl, thanks for the memories, have a wonderful celebration!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Happy Birthday Carl Hester. Celebrate with Carl – enjoy some great pictures of him, and his horses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":54860,"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],"class_list":["post-54831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-dressage","tag-carl-hester"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54831","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=54831"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63530,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54831\/revisions\/63530"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}