Riders gather together for their lesson with Chris
You couldn’t have hoped for better weather at the Chris Burton clinic in Canberra on Saturday. The overcast conditions made for a cool and breezy summers day. As the first group of riders finished off their show jumping lesson the Pre Novice and 1* riders began to gather around waiting for their chance to learn from one the best event riders in the world, Chris Burton.
The use of poles to to keep riders straight
The class started with four riders, Erin Harriott, Kathleen McGrath, Samantha Ring and Margaret Palazzo. The first exercise was a grid with two sets of poles on the ground and jump wings at the end for the riders to go through to keep straight. The grid was designed to teach the riders to adjust their horse’s length of canter to fit into the space between the poles neatly without getting in too deep or taking off too far back from the second set of poles.
The girls warmed up over the poles in trot before Chris told each rider how many strides they had to get in the space. As the group completed the warm up Eleanor Miller arrived as she’d slept through her alarm from her big night out the night before!
Before the group picked up the exercise again Burton got on Erin Harriott’s horse, Foxground Declan, demonstrating how to get the different lengths of canter and showing the girls that they shouldn’t be afraid to make the horse halt immediately if they are not listening to aids.
As the lesson progressed each of the combinations issues became apparent. Samantha Ring’s grey gelding Diamond Café had issues stopping when she asked. Chris combatted this by getting Samantha to ride around the arena in canter halting every few strides. This exercise made a notable difference to the horse’s response time by the end of the lesson.
Kathleen McGraths TB mare Shar Amoon Em Au is very sensitive to aids but willing to please. Chris picked this up at the very beginning after Kathleen halted using a lot of hand.
“This is a nice mare and she’s a mare. This isn’t a Clydesdale gelding she’s a Thoroughbred mare. She can feel a fly land on her skin – you don’t need those aids, trust me.” Chris said to Kathleen as he removed her spurs and whip. Chris went on to teach Kathleen to be a bit gentler with the aids she was giving. The combination jumped beautifully without the artificial aids.
Margaret Palazzos’ gelding Russian Charm had a hard time understanding leg and hand aids. Chris got Margaret to halt and then canter, once in canter she had to ‘cluck’ and then give him a huge ‘legs off the horse’ kick. Once he had gone forward she had to halt again.
“Halting involves this [gestures to pulling back] and this [gestures to releasing]. Why should I [the horse] stop? Because if you do I’ll release that bit of metal that’s in your mouth, that’s all we have to talk to the horse – two bits of leather and a bit of metal. Halting has to be done a lot it should be relaxing” Chris explained before he demonstrated by riding Margaret Palazzo’s horse, Russian Charm.
As the group continued the exercise the first set of poles was made a cross rail and the second made a vertical. As the lesson progressed the second fence was made into an oxer which Chris continued to raise. The riders should be getting 6 strides in the distance in between the cross rail and oxer. Teaching the group that it doesn’t matter how big the jump gets if you hit the right spot you will clear it.
Samantha and Diamond Café over the big oxer
With this exercise Chris decided to test Samantha and Diamond Café. He got her to ride in with the same canter and the same distance as he continued to raise the oxer. At one stage Samantha lent forward and chased the canter which resulted in a rail down. Chris told her to come around again but keep the same canter and position as before. He raised the jump another few hole, the back rail of the fence ended up at around a 1.25m and the combination cleared it easily in the same canter that they’d been in since the 60cm fence.
Moving on from this riders had to complete two courses which put the exercise into practice as the distances between the jumps had to be ridden neatly to ensure that no rails are pulled.
Before beginning the round Chris showed Kathleen an exercise to get her legs closer to the horse. By standing up the stirrups and turning your toes out then sitting down in the saddle again (see photo above) and repeating a couple of times makes the riders lower leg connect more with the horse.
The first course involved the riding down the grid taking a left turn to the cross-rail oxer, straight down to the one stride double then a right turn to a vertical and finally straight down over the square oxer. The second course involved riding down the grid then turning left to the cross-rail oxer but this time taking a right turn to the vertical, then a left turn to the one stride double, straight down to the cross-rail oxer again then a right turn to the square oxer and back down to the vertical.
Eleanor jumps her course
After telling the riders what they needed to work on with their horses Chris gave them a little pep talk telling them "you are all super riders - the Olympians of tomorrow so work hard."
Article and photo: Elizabeth Habermann
