The International Eventing Forum goes from strength to strength and 2016 was no exception with the seating area packed with keen eventing fans, coaches looking to brush up on their skills and plenty of top riders not only in the arena but attending as spectators; we spotted Francis Whittington, Harry Meade, Lucinda Fredericks and Lizzie Brown seated in the stands, just to mention a few.
Despite being held at Hartpury in Gloucestershire the International Eventing Forum has a distinctly Irish flavour to it thanks to the organising committee that includes Eric Smiley, Director and MC for the day, and Jean Mitchell, who is also the Event Director for Tattersalls. Although conceived in Ireland, the IEF is held in England where the numbers of eventing riders make it a more viable proposition and it certainly seems to hit the right note with the UK audience at this time each year
Once Eric had opened proceedings, two very well known riders, Pippa Funnell and Tina Cook were put through their paces by Angela Tucker in the first session of the day. Angela has a background steeped in eventing, as a rider, official and coach and she is still involved with training and producing young horses. Pippa and Tina were asked to bring less established horses as ‘guinea pigs’ for the session and the first two out were two seven year old horses - Pippa’s Billy Walk On (below) and Tina’s Monte Kaolino
There was plenty of friendly banter between the two riders which kept the crowd entertained (the two had shared a room the night before, prompting Tina to share the information that Pippa, aka The Legend, had snored and talked all night) as they each explained their preferred methods of training young horses.
For Pippa, the focal points were building a partnership with her horses and consistency of training
“Every time I do a halt I make sure that it is square. Whatever you’re doing in your training, you have to see it through the whole time and carry it through. It’s all about consistency and repetition, whether you’re hacking out, jumping or doing flat work”
“When something goes wrong with a horse I’m training, I ask myself ‘What did I as a rider do to cause that?’ because usually if I focus on improving my riding in that area, the horse immediately starts to go better”
“You have to focus on your own riding to get better and sadly as I’m getting older, I have to work harder at it so now I do Pilates three times a week to keep my core strength up”
Tina (above) had opted to wear a jumping saddle on her horses and Angela agreed that it was a good idea when doing flat work on young horses as it is easier to do a lot of rising trot in a jumping saddle.
“I don’t have a great arena at home so I do a lot of hacking out on my horses” explained Tina “I try and include all the exercises you would do in an arena while I’m riding out so they don’t get ‘drilled’ – I think it’s important for them to enjoy their work”
Two of Angela’s ‘secret weapons’ for Tina’s young grey horse were using corners and transitions to improve the horse’s balance and self-carriage
“Transitions in the trot help bring the horse’s quarters underneath him. We often say that riders need to use more leg but actually what is often needed is that the horse must be taught to react to the leg in the right way. In the transition you need to ensure that the horse stays in front of your leg, elastic, not leaning and always ready to take the next step”
We have plenty of coverage yet to come from the 2016 line-up at the IEF including more from Pippa and Tina’s session, a great presentation about “The Helpful Coach” by golf mentor David Kearney and of course the main clinic presented by Lucinda Green but in the meantime we’ll leave you with this snippet of video as Pippa and Tina warm up
