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Warmblood By Boyd Martin The Importance of Depth in Your Competition String M


y biggest professional challenge—and my wife Silva will agree—is to not only get horses to the very top of our respective sports, eventing for me


and dressage for her, but to also keep these horses at the peak year after year. All the brilliant riders have their own system for producing and keeping horses at the top of their game. I thought I would share the system I am working to establish over the next ten years.


AN EVENT HORSE PIPELINE Every year I’m on the lookout for three or four promising three- or four-year-olds. (See my previous column in March/ April ’14 for my thoughts on the ideally bred event horse). The first thing I do is look for pedigree: no matter how fancy they are they must have a strong Thoroughbred component. They also must have good movement and jumping ability. These are not expensive horses but horses that I think could, in seven years, have the ability to compete at the four-star level of eventing. The reality is some of these horses might make it—and others won’t. If I do this year after year


after year, it means I’ll have three three-year-olds, three four-year-olds, three five- year-olds and so on, which is way too many horses to ride every day! So as time goes on the culling process will start: horses that I thought to be great jumpers might just be good jumpers and horses that I thought might be great gallopers might not. Therefore from the ages of four to seven I will sell off the ones that don’t meet my criteria. These can make spectacular amateur horses or could fit the criteria of other big-time riders. My ego isn’t fragile—I would be very happy to sell horses that later went on to be brilliant competitors with other riders.


Boyd and one of his syndicated horses, Shamwari 4, head to the World Equestrian Games. Here the pair placed 5th at Great Meadow in Virginia in July.


One year I bred four or five event horses back in Australia;


this was a wonderful source of horses as they were exactly the pedigree and type I was after. I was able to ship these young horses over from Australia. Unfortunately, the increased expense of international airfare has forced me to stop this strategy. Eventually I’ll start cranking up my breeding program over here with a couple of mares; but for now, I’ll keep buying youngsters domestically. As a professional, you should


always have a few horses in the one, two and three-star pipeline. Even though I would enjoy it, it would be pointless having six four-star horses at one time because it would be impossible to get them to events. I’d rather have a couple of Intermediate and Advanced horses, knowing that the four-star horses are getting older and closer to their retirement.


ACCEPT ONLY THE BEST For this process to work well, I need help. To keep my operation running smoothly I employ two excellent assistant riders who have competed at the four-star level, Caitlin Silliman and Mackenna Shea, to assist me with the horses’ flat work and conditioning. These young women help me make sure the horses are produced correctly on the flat; I personally


like to do all the jumping training myself. I start my non-Thoroughbred young horses on a pretty


rigorous fitness program, even when they’re four years old, to start getting them in condition for the fitness I hope they’ll achieve in years to come. And even in their fitness work I’m very particular about who sits on these youngsters. A four- year-old is just as important to me as a ten-year-old! One of the hardest things to do is to admit to yourself that you’ve made a mistake and have a horse in training that’s not


Warmbloods Today 65


Amber Heintzberger


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