Mark Phillips beats a hasty retreat from Verona but things soon improve
In November 2016 Captain Mark Phillips was the guest presenter of the Eventing Masterclass at Equitana and also presented various Education sessions during the event.
The Education sessions present somewhat of a challenge for an eventing rider and coach as the small square arena leaves little room for manoeuvre but the rider, Georgia Stephens handled it well and Mark was full of praise for her skills
At the start of the session Georgia’s mare 12 year old mare Verona nearly booted the overseas guest out of the arena but Mark managed to hop neatly to one side and, as soon as she settled in the environment, Verona proved to be a star despite being a little nervous of the close crowds
"The stirrup iron should sit diagonally across the ball of your foot"
The first thing that Mark focused on was the rider’s position, including the position of the foot in the stirrup iron
“If you’ve got the rider in a good position and a good balance, that enables the horse to give you as much as he can give”
With room for just one jump in the middle of the arena, it was the perfect opportunity focus on narrow fences, which Georgia admitted to having problems with. Starting with a pole, they then jumped a small vertical fence, then a barrel with side wings, and finally just a barrel on its own, ‘taking the training wheels away’
You can jump the barrels both ways but start on the 'training wheels' side
The session was sprinkled with some good stories of jumping the Vicarage Vee at Badminton from a trot and how Andrew Hoy learned to ‘keep hold and don’t abandon them’
But for Mark, as coach, rider and the course designer the ultimate aim is to have the horse ‘locked on’
“With a four star horse you should be able to put two barrels in the middle of a field and pop over them both. In the modern sport they have to be locked on to the narrows because the narrows and the angles are now more than 50% of the sport”
You can listen to much of the presentation in the audio below
Capt Mark Phillips
