The other day we happened upon one of the big eventing websites that had posted Leslie’s gold medal round from Athens as a feature on their daily news as a build up for this year’s games in Rio. I always find it thrilling to watch Leslie, or Stan’s, epic save at the boat houses on cross country where during an otherwise Master Class of a round, Stan chipped in a third stride in the water almost turning himself over, but instead managing to hold it all together to go on and win the individual gold. That one fence, in that one round, is very similar to Andrew Nicholson’s well known ride on Mr. Smiffy at Burghley in 2000 (see video below), where he had that single, terrible jump that earned him the nickname ‘Mr. Stickability’ and instead of ending up on the floor, where most would, he stayed on to win. Watching the video of himself, Leslie just smiled and said, “Isn’t it amazing what a fine line it often is. How easy it is in our sport to have that fine line between ending up in the floor, and winning a major event.” That got me thinking about our sport in general and how, in fact, most of what we do as riders, coaches, and other professionals in the sport is a balancing act of trying our best to stay on the right side of that fine line.
As riders, at home on a daily basis we are continually grappling with numerous fine lines either consciously or not. While we sit on our horses there are the lines between training vs drilling, educating the young horse vs over training the young horse, discipline vs anger, helping your horse vs allowing your horse to learn by its own mistakes, and the list goes on and on. Then off the horse you again face numerous fine lines, for example, too much vet work vs not enough, and a favorite; treating your horse like an athlete with all of the new-fangled technology and products out today vs allowing the horse any semblance of a natural life.
As competitors in eventing, as I’ve already touched on, the cross country portion of our sport amazes me as it is often such a fine line between ending up on the floor and having a night of pure misery and depression vs having a wonderful round and thinking that was so easy, I have no idea what I was worried about earlier, aren’t I amazing and aren’t my horses just the mutt’s nuts?!
The other weekend I was at Ocala Horse Trials where a horse was sadly put down due to a broken leg and as well, when we were out walking our course for a final time a woman had a fall and was lying on the floor for an awfully long time before the ambulance arrived (she is find btw). Between those two things that morning you really do wander around for a moment with a pit in your stomach and show jumping starts to seem very attractive all of a sudden.
There are, of course, the inevitable ‘accidents’ that can always happen in the sport as the two incidences I mentioned above may of very well have been where no one is to blame at all, but then there are the terrible instances that can happen ranging from an irritating 20 run out, to a crashing fall that could have been avoided had the rider been better. A moment of bad riding in our sport can lead to the most devastating of consequences and that is a fine line I take very seriously and that sadly we see too often dismissed by cavalier riders who leave too much to their poor horses.
At that particular event, which was very difficult cross country (more on that later), I had two brilliant rides on the Prelim with my two new young horses and I came across the finish line thinking, well that was fairly easy, I should of really run them faster. And that pit of intrepidation in my stomach had been replaced with the thrill that fills one after a great cross country ride, but my brain is smart enough to say that was good today, but you still need to be better.
I forget who said it first, but that old adage rings very true about horses being just like bank accounts. You put money in and you take money out and when that balance reaches zero it is game over. That money, of course, is confidence and every time you have a single bad ride to a fence and make your horse bail you out you make a withdrawal and it is essential you are always putting in much more than you are taking out. I try very hard to stash as much cash away as I can in case I ever, god forbid, need to make a big withdrawal. I see scary riders every weekend at events and watch as they go fence after fence taking money out of that bank and wonder at how much further they will get down the road with that horse before their number comes up and they end up either on the floor or with a sour horse that is done with the game. There is a fine line between making mistakes and continuously taxing your horse.
Another profession which has to deal with fine lines in our sport is the cross country course designer. I very much admire the designers and have two very good friends in that profession. I admire them because they have a skill set of imagination and creativity that I will never have and as well because they carry a heavy burden of responsibility within their job that most of us, I am sure, take for granted. I know I walk these courses week in and out and only ever think of how they relate to me and not to the massive amount of thought that went into the placement and build of each and every jump out there. I also know, at least with regards to my two friends, that they are people that love the sport and the animals and want very much to do a good job and have good sport without any accidents. Yet, while there are standards of build, dimensions and guidelines for every level, there is much to the design that is left up to the discretion of the builders and that is where we find more fine lines.
We went to the Rocking Horse I event in January where the Prelim was what I would call a nice upgrading course for the start of the season, and then two weeks later went to Ocala Horse Trials, where the Prelim track was pretty much unrecognizable to the Rocking Horse one. It was so much more difficult. It was like an entirely different level altogether. It was bigger and certainly far more technical than the previous event much closer to what I would expect to find at a CCI * in April than a horse trial at the start of February and that was pretty much the consensus from all the riders I spoke to. Leslie and I walked the course with our students consisting of young people moving up to Prelim for the first or second time and adult amateurs who do the sport for fun, and at the end of the course I pulled Leslie aside and said, “Sheesh! I am not sure how I am going to get around this with my young horses how are our students going to fair?”
Now, Jay who designs that course is one of my very old friends, and I love and respect him dearly and there was not a jump on that course that was out of line with the specifications of that level and on top of that every single jump was built beautifully. So this has nothing negative at all to do with Jay, but as a rider and a coach you had to wonder. How does one produce a young horse or a young rider if this is what we have to contend with at the start of February?
At fence 7, we had a big enough table jump on a bending 7 to a large enough triple brush hedge then on a rather short bending 4 to a second triple brush. Had my horses ever seen anything like that before? No. Had my students seen anything like that? No. Does that make me a bad trainer and coach? Maybe? But never in my wildest dreams would I have expected to see that on course in February at a Prelim. I plan my horses and students from the three day and work backward expecting to increase in difficulty as we go towards the end goal. I never would have thought we would see end goal questions in February, but perhaps that is where the sport has gone. But then I ask again – how do we produce the inexperienced? Should we be drilling away at home over cross country questions until our horses are ready to face the toughest of questions at every level? But how many people have the accessibility and means to do that?
I was able to briefly attend the ICP Symposium at Long Wood a few weeks ago and had the pleasure of listening to David O. teach on day one. I am always amazed by what a genius David is at speaking and how obvious it is how many years and years of thought and work he had done to educate himself on coaching. One of the most interesting parts I found in his talk was when he spoke on what he believes are the five levels of learning in a rider. The first was Practical: the simple how to hold the reins, where to put your leg, etc. The second was Theoretical: which, although he listed it as second, I think really bleeds into the rider’s entire life, as David himself is an example of someone who even still is clearly to this day a scholar of the theoretical. The third was Instinct. An interesting topic that I am always reiterating to my students that it is not that I, or Leslie for that matter, can always avoid mistakes, it is simply that more often than not we can recognize them as they are happening and do something to fix or contain them from becoming something terrible. David spoke to the fact that as coaches we can aid in the development of instinct by making our students more self-aware of what is going on and the why a mistake happened and what could have been done to abate it. However, I think a large part of instinct comes from years of going out of the box and learning how to react to the endless sinerios one can be faced with on cross country. I don’t think that schooling technical questions at home, while necessary, can compare with the being in the moment on a cross country course, and I think for those reasons we have to have a progression of courses throughout the year and not hit out with maximum difficulty at the start of the season.
After we finished the event and Leslie and I had been successful with all of our young horses and exactly half of our students were successful and half were not, I asked Leslie’s opinion again of the course and again it came up. It’s a fine line between giving the hard questions which were probably a good education for our young horses, and will no doubt make them wiser for the future, and having something that was too difficult for the learning rider to deal with. I think, in the end, Jay built a fabulous course that could have had a bit more value if he had added some options at the harder fences like fence 7. But again, I don’t envy the course designers. They tread the find line of being criticized if it’s too easy vs it’s too hard day in and out, and that’s one fine line I’m happy not to have to tread.
I think as participants in any and every aspect of the sport, it is our duty to become a guardian of the fine lines. I am always a huge proponent of education outside of the saddle and listened to Leslie the other day explaining to his American Developing Riders that they must become scholars of the sport and not just participants if they truly want to be good at what they do. Much time must be spent in the saddle, but one must not forget to take the time after the show, the time at night to go through what did I do wrong? What could I have done better? Did I flirt with disaster today? How can I be better? At the end of the day, the vets, course designers and coaches are all trying to tend to their own betterment. It is up to you to examine your own fine lines and make sure you stay on the right side of them.
