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work,” he continues. “As his body loosened up and his bal- ance improved, the resistance I felt when I tried to put him together disappeared and I felt a more confident horse under me. Now on the ground, he’s a little pushier and more full of himself. He’s not so inward. You want an eventing horse to be more aggressive-minded. He’s quick on cross country; he never wastes energy and jumps just enough. But, he now has more of a ‘go get ‘em’ attitude, rather than ‘I’m not sure.’” The CIC3* at Rebecca Farms belonged to Super Socks


(nicknamed Flaxen and is by Castle Quest). “Rarely do you have an event where you’re happy with all three phases, but this was such an event,” Matt says. “We had a moment in our partnership in the dressage arena before the whistle. He was going to explode. I circled outside the arena several times and went past my allotted time. But with the last circle, he came back to me mentally. Before when this has happened, he goes in and does his own test, putting in random flying changes, cantering in the medium trot. But there he let me ride him and since then he has felt great.”


Mounting Confidence & Support Matt’s personality demonstrates an enviable calm attitude in stressful situations. “He has tremendous, outlandish focus, more than most dressage riders,” says coach Volker Brom- mann. “And he has an unbelievable inner calmness. I’ve been around him at shows where he’s showing three or four horses and has five or six students. When I talk to him, he always makes me feel like he could listen to me for three hours, that what I‘m saying matters. It’s an amazing personality trait. He makes students feel that too when he is with them. He’s calm and methodical. The horses love him. He has a talent he doesn’t know. He can ride all types of horses because he is so balanced and knows just what the horse needs.” In the same way that Super Socks has grown in his confi-


dence, improving his strengthen and suppleness, Matt, always the student, has also grown, both as a rider and in his confi- dence to go after the dream of a young boy. “I’ve been reminded by old friends that when I started rid-


ing, I always talked about going to the Olympics. At that age I thought that if you didn’t make it to the Olympics, it was be- cause you didn’t work hard enough or have enough passion. As you grow up, you learn about how hard everyone works, how much you don’t know, the skills or experience you don’t have, how meager your bank account is and how your best horse doesn’t seem to match the level of the horses that get on the teams,” he says. “I let that dream go. I had a business to run and bills to


pay,” he admits. “Then during the last Olympic Games, I start- ed to think it was something I didn’t want to let go. Maybe I felt more confident about my riding. Maybe I dropped my guard and let the voice bubble up to the surface of my con- sciousness. I found the courage to speak the words out loud. I started mentioning it to my client, Valerie Fish. I had never talked about it before. And she asked me what it takes and then said, ‘Why don’t we do that?’”


“As I began saying the words more loudly and more often,


and more people told me they believed in me, I realized that if I’m not confident enough to talk about it, I won’t be able to do it. I may not make it, but if I don’t try it, I need to do some- thing else the rest of my life,” he explains. “And I’ve realized you have to be willing to ask for help from others and stand on other people’s shoulders. I have been blown away by the people rooting for me.” Recent fundraising activities have garnered support be-


yond Matt’s expectations. “My fellow riders, who I compete against regularly and who no doubt want to win as much as I do, have gone out of their way to tell me they are rooting for me. They’ve donated time and money toward my goals. They drive my hunger to learn more, and push me to improve and be the best horseman I can be.”


Happenstance and Matt take the blue in the CCI2* at Rebecca Farm. The supporter whose devotion has surprised no one is his


wife and best friend Cecily Clark. “Everybody who knows me knows that I would not be here without my wife. She does everything bar ride the horse. I owe everything to her,” he says. “If it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t be getting on the horse at the right time or be in the right place in the right clothes. She puts as much if not more into this than I do and without her I would not be able to do any of this.” Two out of three goals on Matt’s list have been checked


off: first, get on the High Performance list and ride with David O’Connor; second, compete at the CCI 3* at Fair Hill. And now he waits while working toward the final (at least for now) goal: to represent the United States in international competition. With his melding of world philosophies, Matt will no doubt take his Western classical training and mix in Eastern focus, centeredness and acceptance in order to find a way to make all this work. Whenever he glances down at his wrist tattoos, he is reminded of the courage he needs to create the changes about which he dreams.


Warmbloods Today 29


Brian Schott


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