The (re)start of a golden era of Badminton?

[Mince Pie]

or the great MT suffer indecision on his first ride and he does seem to have a thing about The Lake to ride it so badly the next time?

To be fair to Toddy that horse wasn't listening to him at all in the lake, he had both hands on the right rein trying to get him to turn to the boat.

I really enjoyed Badminton this year and hope that they keep the new course designer. It's not often you see people like Toddy, WFP and AN actually working round a course, usually they all look so calm! It will be interesting to see how it rides next year now that people have had a slight rude awakening as to how much it has changed. Gutted for Nicola Wilson getting the points for that pin at the new lake, I'm not sure that was really deserved.

 

[Jo_x]

Gutted for Nicola Wilson getting the points for that pin at the new lake, I'm not sure that was really deserved.

She got the pin penalties at the Vicarage V, not the lake. If you look at the e-venting photos it looks like a fair decision.

 

[Leaping]

Gutted for Nicola Wilson getting the points for that pin at the new lake, I'm not sure that was really deserved.

penalties were for the pin broken at the Vicarage Vee, not the new pond (and if you look on e-venting you can see that the pin did look like it saved a horse fall) so think they were deserved

 

[Darremi]

That's interesting that they mentioned it actually, I didn't get to watch it as I'm in America at the moment with limited internet!

Our horses canter 6 days a week, and we do interval training. They also go in the walker in the evenings. Trot one lap to warm up.
One lap of our track is just short of a mile of undulating ground so a weekly routine would be

Monday - 1 and 3/8ths
Tuesday - 2 and 1/2
Wednesday - 3
Thursday - 2 and school over hurdles/timber
Friday - 3
Saturday - 3 but on the last lap, we breeze them upsides or on their own, depending on how much our trainer wants them to do and that would last for about 5/8ths.

Any horses who do a longer distance, apart from Mondays and Tuesdays, will go for another half a mile.
Hope this helps in anyway, even if it's just for general interest.

Thanks Teri, that is very interesting and useful

I think that many eventers only canter their horse once or twice per week. On the other days are a mixture of dressage, sj and hacking. Overall this is significantly less that what you are doing. At present I canter twice per week.

But I now realise that if I am to do a 3 day event I should really be doing it more often. I will shorten my schooling sessions and do canterwork at the end.

Thank you so much for very useful info!!

 

[Gamebird]

Thanks Teri, that is very interesting and useful

I think that many eventers only canter their horse once or twice per week. On the other days are a mixture of dressage, sj and hacking. Overall this is significantly less that what you are doing. At present I canter twice per week.

But I now realise that if I am to do a 3 day event I should really be doing it more often. I will shorten my schooling sessions and do canterwork at the end.

Thank you so much for very useful info!!

I'm honestly not convinced by this. They are two very different jobs and types of horses. There's a reason very few people canter more than every three days (most canter every 4 days). I fully agree with incorporating more canter nto schooling - I timed a schooling session the other day and found that I did about 10 mins in walk (5mins at the start and the finish) 10mins in trot and 20mins in canter, including stuff that was quite hard work llike 15m counter-canter circles and lots of canter half-pass. However on watching other people most do the majority of their schooling in trot.

I think you're aiming at Blair? I should probably also mention (sorry to those who have heard it before) that I once got a horse far too fit for Blair - so fit I couldn't ride one side of it on the XC. That was a very chunky half-bred horse and the ground was so hard that year I did all his cantering doing intervals every four days in an arena. I can't imagine a chunkier horse than mine competing at that level so I can't see the advantage of cantering more than every 3/4 days.

I'd probably canter smarter rather than canter more often: use hills, do a lot of very steady long canter sets interspersed with the occasional run up through the gears.

Each to his own (I've spent a couple of seasons riding NH horses so am au fait with cantering them every day too), but I'm not sure the answer is to start thinking about cantering 3+ times a week.

 

[LEC]

That training is for racehorses. Not eventers. Eventers also need to be able to have the correct musculature to jump 30 fences xc, Sj cleanly on the last day and do dressage to advanced medium standard. A racehorse only needs the musculature to brush through steeplechase fences and gallop. A very different proposition and challenge.

Its like comparing Jessica Ennis training to that of Mo Farah!! Yes Jessica needs to be fit, but fit for purpose not fit for marathon.

 

[Darremi]

That training is for racehorses. Not eventers. Eventers also need to be able to have the correct musculature to jump 30 fences xc, Sj cleanly on the last day and do dressage to advanced medium standard. A racehorse only needs the musculature to brush through steeplechase fences and gallop. A very different proposition and challenge.

Its like comparing Jessica Ennis training to that of Mo Farah!! Yes Jessica needs to be fit, but fit for purpose not fit for marathon.

I was not proposing to start doing fast work every day, but I was simply exploring the ideas that I had gleaned from Teri's very useful information.

I live in Scotland and I have been to Blair before on a near full TB 6yo and she coped with it easily with very little work. However my current horse is nearly full WB and takes a lot of work to get fit. I very much doubt he could ever be "too" fit for Blair CCI2*.

What I was proposing was to continue with my normal routine. Ie. 2-3 schooling sessions per week, but incorporate a couple of canters up our hill at the end, not a full blown interval session like I do 2x per week. To be honest my horse tends to canter every second day anyway whilst out on a hack.

I also do 50-60 minute schooling sessions all in trot and canter. He is as fit as I have ever had him, bearing in mind he has few miles on the clock atm.

Anyway we are getting away from the original point that many have made, that horses are tiring so easily at 4 star in recent years. My suggestion was that as riders we need to look towards racing to explore fitness options.

And personally I think the Mo Farah and Jessica Ennis analogy is unhelpful. Going round a NH course and going round a four star are not as different as people think.

 

[Gamebird]

And personally I think the Mo Farah and Jessica Ennis analogy is unhelpful. Going round a NH course and going round a four star are not as different as people think.

I agree in part with looking at NH training - part of the reason I worked in a NH/PTP yard was to enable me to learn more about fittening work. They're not worlds apart, but there are still pretty major differences. I know when I entered my (ex) eventer for a 4 mile XC race I did very different fitness work compared to what I did with him for eventing.

Plus there is a long history of racing (and specifically NH) influence in eventing. I suspect a lot of the more transferrable training techniques have already been applied to fittening eventers.

Perhaps we'd be able to take more from looking at how they fittened long format horses in eg. the 80s? A lot of those skills seem to have been lost.

 

[khalswitz]

I was not proposing to start doing fast work every day, but I was simply exploring the ideas that I had gleaned from Teri's very useful information.

I live in Scotland and I have been to Blair before on a near full TB 6yo and she coped with it easily with very little work. However my current horse is nearly full WB and takes a lot of work to get fit. I very much doubt he could ever be "too" fit for Blair CCI2*.

What I was proposing was to continue with my normal routine. Ie. 2-3 schooling sessions per week, but incorporate a couple of canters up our hill at the end, not a full blown interval session like I do 2x per week. To be honest my horse tends to canter every second day anyway whilst out on a hack.

I also do 50-60 minute schooling sessions all in trot and canter. He is as fit as I have ever had him, bearing in mind he has few miles on the clock atm.

Anyway we are getting away from the original point that many have made, that horses are tiring so easily at 4 star in recent years. My suggestion was that as riders we need to look towards racing to explore fitness options.

And personally I think the Mo Farah and Jessica Ennis analogy is unhelpful. Going round a NH course and going round a four star are not as different as people think.

Just in case this helps as well, me and a friend walked the 3* course at with Beanie Sturgis and Bettina Hoy last year at Blair. Beanie was riding a TB, and Bettina a big WB. Bettina said the WBs are notably slower at Blair XC due to the hills (the long uphill takes up 1/3 of the course and therefore really impacts where you want to be at your minute markers), and she had to REALLY make up time on the flat and the downhill, so she had really upped her fittening regime in order to take that horse round Blair. In addition, now Ian Stark is taking over the course building it is going to be meaty!!!

 

[Garnet]

Compared with the “good old days”, the low number of completions this year is partially due to the rules that eliminate anyone who has a fall of horse and/or rider and anyone who accumulates three (or is it five?) refusals. There were also several technical eliminations for jumping the wrong side of a flag, at least two of which were at the second corner at Huntsman’s Close. Why did the red flag for the second corner need to be close to the white flag? Of course no-one wants to see riders aiming their horses at an impossibly wide part of the fence, but if the red flag had been positioned a little further to the right, then both Gemma Tattersall and Ludvig Svennerstal would have been recorded as completions rather than eliminations.
Perhaps the blustery wind and the hill up to the New Pond made the course extra testing this year, but in the “good old days” the Badminton cross country had an optimum time up to 14 minutes with the loop over the Luckington Lane to the Centre Walk Aintree fences and Tom Smith’s Walls.
Also in the “good old days” there were only two 4* events per year, Badminton and Burghley, and no CICs, so with the long format (meaning that the horses had already completed a significant part of the Speed and Endurance test before starting on the cross country phase), fewer riders would retire after one refusal early on the course and re-route to Lumuhlen or Chatsworth instead. A completion at Badminton in those days was comparatively more prestigious, even with a couple of refusals or an unseated rider and remount, as there were fewer opportunities to complete a 4* event.
So my sweeping generalisations of the day are:
1 It was good to see a competition where the cross-country exerted such a strong influence on the results.
2 Riders will probably get their horses fitter for future Badmintons. With the benefit of hindsight, Badminton 2013 probably lulled some people into a false sense of security about the difficulty of the cross country.
3 The number of completions will be lower these days. Elimination of all fallers and cumulative refusals increases the number of eliminations compared with retirements. Some riders will retire after an early refusal and re-route to one of the many other prestigious events now available.

Bring on the new era!

 

[Gamebird]

Of course no-one wants to see riders aiming their horses at an impossibly wide part of the fence, but if the red flag had been positioned a little further to the right, then both Gemma Tattersall and Ludvig Svennerstal would have been recorded as completions rather than eliminations.

I think siting the red flag any further to the right would be a mistake primarily because their horses had to scramble across that part of the corner as it was far too wide. What I do think might have helped would have been a red flag on the front as well as the back.

With regard to that corner those coming from the long route tooke two different lines to it. Those that came inside the trees and got back onto the short route line got a straight shot at it and didn't end up on a wide bit over towards the red flag. Those that stayed wide (out to the left of the trees) then swung back in tended to jump across the corner (ie. towards the red flag) and end up straddling it.

I agree with the heartbreak of believing you've jumped a clear (although I suspect both would have had their worries whether they'd been on the right side of the flag) to be told after the finish that you've actually been eliminated.

 

[Garnet]

What I do think might have helped would have been a red flag on the front as well as the back.

With regard to that corner those coming from the long route tooke two different lines to it. Those that came inside the trees and got back onto the short route line got a straight shot at it and didn't end up on a wide bit over towards the red flag. Those that stayed wide (out to the left of the trees) then swung back in tended to jump across the corner (ie. towards the red flag) and end up straddling it.

Agree!

 

[Teri]

Also as another point to add, I worked for a young rider last year whilst I took a break from racing, and I could count the number of times she had a good canter on one hand!
I agree, you can't canter an event horse as much as a racehorse, you have other things you need to concentrate on but by the sounds of it, the horses were getting way too tired for the level they were at!
Totally agree with Garnet also, very well made points.

 

[cundlegreen]

Re the canter work, its about the quality not the quantity. You need your horse to be taking a real grip on the bit, then its working correctly, especially if you canter uphill (sadly lacking here in Suffolk!). I'm another one who has worked a lot with racehorses. In my day when I worked for the top P-T-P yard in the UK, the horses were given weeks trotting on tracks before graduating to cantering on the dreaded "hilly field", scene of many a person being bucked off! By the time we got to the gallops, weeks had gone by, and the horses were galloped almost everyday over 4 miles, and usually clocking around 35 to 40 mph!. They were as fit as fleas, and could, and did, come out and win every week. Nowadays, nobody would dream of following that regime, but I don't remember any having a leg problem over the four seasons that I was there.
I think its important to have a horse fit enough not only for the event but to avoid injury.

 

[oldvic]

I agree with nearly all your post, but Nereo left a leg going into the pond - I don't think you can blame that all on the pinning, and whilst a big AN fan and know he is an incredible horseman, the impression I got watching it on telly was that he didn't really set the horse up for the exit as well as he could have done and Nereo left a leg (which you also wouldn't expect from that horse)

A good cross country horse will use his hind legs dropping on to a downhill fence/fence into water to act as a brake. Nereo does this going into the pond. He is as neat as he normally is in front and certainly didn't leave a leg there. His braking system failed as the rail gave way when it shouldn't have. This meant he was running forward through the water and unable to react correctly to the half halts. Andrew admits he was caught by surprise as in his 9 year career the horse has never left a leg but he didn't feel he was getting close enough to the fence to need a defensive position and uphill that can be energy sapping for the horse.

With regard to the fitness, many of the top riders rode in the days of long format and say that the horses need to be as fit now as they were then. It might be that a less blood horse needs more fast work especially the first time they get truly fit but once you have reached that fitness, it is easier to get back there. As others have said, there is a difference in the jobs that a racehorse and an event horse do. For one, the racehorse goes at a more constant speed which requires different muscles and is less tiring. The turns and little ups and downs also take it out of a horse and need a different balance. One thing I think is relevant is that racehorses are got properly fit for the first time at a much younger age. Also, it doesn't matter that the event horse does the flat work, jumping, etc. but that is part of the fitness regime so it must be work.

 

[AdorableAlice]

This is probably going to be a ridiculous comment but I will give it a go.

I am beginning to wonder if course builders (both sj and event) have reached the limit in what they can design for the modern horse we have today. We have watched horses tackle very technical fences/distances etc. Saturday we watched them jump huge solid fences. The top showjumpers are capable of jumping massive fences.

Breeding has produced the ultimate athlete, modern medicine has kept him healthy, vast experience from the worlds best riders and trainers have produced the horse at his very best, and here is my question, has the modern competition horse reached the limit of what is physically possible for the equine structure to achieve ?

I enjoyed Badminton, I enjoy watching the Nations Cup and the top dressage horses but in all three disciplines I do wonder if the horse is teetering on the edge of being asked the impossible at times.

 

[Polar Bear9]

This is probably going to be a ridiculous comment but I will give it a go.

I am beginning to wonder if course builders (both sj and event) have reached the limit in what they can design for the modern horse we have today. We have watched horses tackle very technical fences/distances etc. Saturday we watched them jump huge solid fences. The top showjumpers are capable of jumping massive fences.

Breeding has produced the ultimate athlete, modern medicine has kept him healthy, vast experience from the worlds best riders and trainers have produced the horse at his very best, and here is my question, has the modern competition horse reached the limit of what is physically possible for the equine structure to achieve ?

I enjoyed Badminton, I enjoy watching the Nations Cup and the top dressage horses but in all three disciplines I do wonder if the horse is teetering on the edge of being asked the impossible at times.

I've thought about this as well AA. I think we might reach a point where they are all so good, so at the top of what is capable, that its nearly impossible to separate between them. Its the same with human athletes. There will reach a point where a sprinter will run a 100 metre time that no one will beat. As hard as w push ourselves, as good as medicine and training is, at no point will a human run a 100 meters in 1 second for example. I also think we don't want that, that its better to see people struggling over a top level course and having to really work for victory than having every horse go perfectly on a good dressage score and clear XC and SJ. At the end of the day these courses are the height of the sport and I think they should be challenging.

To answer the initial question, I thought this year was fantastic, I loved watching it and it was great to see dressage playing less of a role for once. Both Dressage and SJ are stand alone sports at top level whereas XC is not so I do think it should be a proper test. Also good to see the frangible pins in action and saving lives.

 

[dieseldog]

This is probably going to be a ridiculous comment but I will give it a go.

I am beginning to wonder if course builders (both sj and event) have reached the limit in what they can design for the modern horse we have today. We have watched horses tackle very technical fences/distances etc. Saturday we watched them jump huge solid fences. The top showjumpers are capable of jumping massive fences.

Breeding has produced the ultimate athlete, modern medicine has kept him healthy, vast experience from the worlds best riders and trainers have produced the horse at his very best, and here is my question, has the modern competition horse reached the limit of what is physically possible for the equine structure to achieve ?

I enjoyed Badminton, I enjoy watching the Nations Cup and the top dressage horses but in all three disciplines I do wonder if the horse is teetering on the edge of being asked the impossible at times.

The horse might be close to the perfect well bred horse - but they still have to cope with the mongrels on their backs ;p

I don't think any country has started breeding riders yet, although there is evidence it might be a good idea if you look at some of the riding dynasties, think there are probably countries out there trying for the perfect track athlete though.

 

[popsdosh]

This is probably going to be a ridiculous comment but I will give it a go.

I am beginning to wonder if course builders (both sj and event) have reached the limit in what they can design for the modern horse we have today. We have watched horses tackle very technical fences/distances etc. Saturday we watched them jump huge solid fences. The top showjumpers are capable of jumping massive fences.

Breeding has produced the ultimate athlete, modern medicine has kept him healthy, vast experience from the worlds best riders and trainers have produced the horse at his very best, and here is my question, has the modern competition horse reached the limit of what is physically possible for the equine structure to achieve ?

I enjoyed Badminton, I enjoy watching the Nations Cup and the top dressage horses but in all three disciplines I do wonder if the horse is teetering on the edge of being asked the impossible at times.

The horses have always been capable of these huge fences the riders just werent ready for it on Saturday as it had become progressively easier the last few years. If you think the fences are bigger now you are mistaken ask the riders who rode when HW was course designer or look at some footage of SJ back in the 50s and 60s from white city etc.Look at eventing at the Helsinki olympics you would be horrified by it the only limit in those days was the human imagination

 

[AdorableAlice]

The horses have always been capable of these huge fences the riders just werent ready for it on Saturday as it had become progressively easier the last few years. If you think the fences are bigger now you are mistaken ask the riders who rode when HW was course designer or look at some footage of SJ back in the 50s and 60s from white city etc.Look at eventing at the Helsinki olympics you would be horrified by it the only limit in those days was the human imagination

I was not saying the fences were too big, I am well aware horses have the power to jump big fences. I have a horse at home with Alme and I Love you in him and there is not a fence on the farm that he considers to be more than a trotting pole.

What I am trying, badly I think, to say is there must be a limit to a horses physical ability. They are animals not highly engineered machines that can be redesigned to produce evermore speed or power.

Huntsmans Close was unedifying to watch at times and to the uneducated eye the whole afternoon turned into an equine 'it's a knockout' and I am not sure that is how the sport should be portrayed to the general public.

 

[popsdosh]

I was not saying the fences were too big, I am well aware horses have the power to jump big fences. I have a horse at home with Alme and I Love you in him and there is not a fence on the farm that he considers to be more than a trotting pole.

What I am trying, badly I think, to say is there must be a limit to a horses physical ability. They are animals not highly engineered machines that can be redesigned to produce evermore speed or power.

Huntsmans Close was unedifying to watch at times and to the uneducated eye the whole afternoon turned into an equine 'it's a knockout' and I am not sure that is how the sport should be portrayed to the general public.

What I am trying to say is they have been asked harder questions in the past perhaps it was less PC in those days.There were no limits back then and they all had to carry a minimum weight.
I think most people are happy that it was tougher this year at least the CC was influential rather than being just something to entertain the crowd on the Saturday of a dressage weekend.