Warmblood By Michael Barisone Playing the Lottery – to Win L
et me start by saying, I am not a great competitor. What I am is a good horse trainer. I train young horses to do the Grand Prix, that’s my thing. I take the ones that buck and spin and I ride them. In essence, I’m a cowboy that rides in a dressage saddle! Sometimes my horses don’t even set foot in a
competition arena until they are competing at the FEI levels. And when they do, sometimes those horses win. Not everyone can do this, and it certainly doesn’t work for every horse or every discipline. (You could not take an event horse to his first event at the advanced level, because every level is a stepping stone to the next as they learn how to navigate the questions on a cross-country course.) But American dressage riders need to figure out how we can consistently get horses to the Grand Prix level and win on the international stage. Each rider who hopes to compete at this level must develop a system that works -- for them and their team -- to bring horses along. Without that system, trying to win internationally is like trying to win the lottery without buying a ticket. To see a lottery winner, we have only to look at British
rider and trainer Carl Hester and understand how this man does what he does. The guy is a simply a great horse trainer. His horse Nip Tuck was bought for a mere 2,000 euros but is winning in the Grand Prix arena. Beyond training and talent, there is admittedly an
element of luck in what we do. Winning anything is a lotto and timing is everything. Take Valegro for instance. If Carl Hester had walked into the barn half an hour later, and someone had walked in before him, we wouldn’t be talking about the 92% Charlotte Dujardin just earned with Valegro at the WEG. Getting the horse to that level at that time is like winning Powerball: he didn’t take a wrong step in the arena at the wrong time, or injure himself in turnout, or develop a hoof abscess the day before the WEG. When the wrong thing
doesn’t happen, and all the good things converge at the same time, you’ve literally got a winning ticket. While he has coached Charlotte and Valegro to amazing
success, Carl has never won a major championship himself. But he is consistently on good horses, one after another after another. Hubertus Schmidt has ridden more than a hundred horses, achieving consistent scores, again and again. That’s his system. He knows how to keep horses coming up the levels, how to deal with adversity and how to keep his horses in the pipeline. Isabel Werth may not have been number one every year, but she’s always in the top ten, always on horses she’s trained—or her staff has trained. Now
there’s a system for you. Setting yourself up to
win the lotto means having a diligent plan. Look at eventer Boyd
Martin—he’s always cultivating a pipeline (see last issue’s Warmblood
Whoas column). At his farm he has simple electric-tape fence and shed row barns but he runs a tight ship and has
brilliant horses—and makes sure he has good
footing in his arenas and a fantastic cross-country schooling course. He focuses on what it takes to
win, and his results show that his system is paying off. (Boyd was the top-placing U.S. event rider at the 2010 and 2014 World Equestrian Games.) I’ve been around longer than Boyd and I have fancy
facilities. I haven’t won the World Cup or Aachen or the Olympics but I’ve been in the game for a long time. I haven’t won the lotto—but I have a lot of tickets. I lost a few tickets along the way. Some of them are around the house and I hope I find them before their expiration date. I have more young horses waiting in the wings if I can’t cash in these tickets in time. I have four Grand Prix horses right now. Two of them are
laid up, but at least I have four possibilities. I continue to add horses, deal with clients and work on people skills, as I build a team of people behind me.
Warmbloods Today 97
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