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An Authentic Jumper

Corner By Judy Wardrope

examine. Most know Authentic as Beezie Madden’s Dutch Warmblood Olympic mount, the horse that anchored the American team to gold and carried Madden to the individual bronze medal in 2008. He represents the ‘modern’ type, in part due to his Thoroughbred broodmare sire, but what are the conformational factors, the mechanics, that make him a great jumper? Let’s start with his motor. As with all the top

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jumpers, the ilium side (top of hip to point of buttock) and the femur side (point of buttock to stifle protrusion) are essentially equal in length. This aids in the ability to coil the rear spring. His stifle protrusion is well below the level of his sheath, which not only increases the range of

ather than analyze a young prospect, we have selected a proven successful jumper to

point of view

motion of the hind leg, and thus the stride length, it adds the all important element of scope. Notice where the stifle is in the action shots and how that provides scope. Moving to his transmission, we are looking for

the strength to transfer the power upward and forward. The top athletes have a lumbosacral gap (the palpable dip just in front of the high point of the croup) that is bisected by a line drawn from the top of one hip to the top of the other. That is what we find here. Moving to the forequarters, we find that his humerus shows a pronounced rise from elbow to point of shoulder. This aids in quickness of the forehand over jumps and lightness of the forehand. If the humerus is longer or has less rise, it takes longer to go through its range of motion.

58 September/October 2009

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