Warmblood By Michael Barisone Imprinting at its Finest T
he only way to learn to ride is to actually spend time in the saddle. You can watch videos, read books and learn about different theories, but when
it comes down to it, you’ve got to learn what it feels like by sitting on a horse. It stands to reason, then, that sit- ting on a well-trained horse teach- es a rider what it should feel like. I spend a lot of time traveling
and teaching clinics, and I often go back to my hotel room and shake my head that nobody’s ever taught a rider the basics. You can teach a method and a system, but you can’t teach a style and you can’t teach feel. Explaining with analogies such as, “Feel like you’re holding an egg against the horse with your leg—if you squeeze too hard it’ll break or if it’s too loose it’ll fall,” only goes so far. I’m teaching a girl who’s a great
rider who has been working on her own for a long time and has done well, but she has to learn what a Grand Prix horse feels like in order to put that level of training on her own horse. Last time she was here my wife Vera suggested she hop up on Urbanus, who’s my all-time Grand Prix high score champion. She gave the aids to Urbanus and he came on the bit, his hind legs came under and she was like, “whoa!” This student felt piaffe and said, “Wait a minute—this is dif- ferent than what I thought it was.” She’s not going to get that feeling on her own horse yet, but when the time comes, at least somewhere she got the idea of what it should feel like. Style refers to your body type, muscle memory, all those things— but feel is elusive and that’s what a correctly trained horse teaches a rider. A human voice cannot teach feel, but a horse talks with his body language and that’s the biggest benefit to riding an educated horse. I can’t teach feel… but a horse can.
At the high end of the sport, right now we have the
process of selecting horses for the Olympics next year. And we have a few that really stand out: Steffen Peters on Rosamunde or Legolas, Laura Graves on Verdades and Ali Brock on Roosevelt, who are more likely to be on the team than other less-experi- enced combinations. Steffen has ridden everything,
for a very long time. He could ride a chair and win an Olympic medal. Laura is there because of this
incredible partnership with Ver- dades, the kind so rarely seen. Laura’s mother bought her a youngster and together they’ve made it to the top of the top level. Her story gives everyone hope; it’s the dream we want everyone to have. But her story is one in a mil- lion. It’s the perfect horse with the perfect rider at the perfect time— truly a perfect storm.
Allison Brock is at the other end of the spectrum. “Wait a minute—
this is different than what I thought it was.”
She’s been my student for a long time; she’s won at Dev- on, she won in Austria—she’s been winning everywhere. Fourteen years ago she had the opportunity to be Sue Blinks’ working student and she got to ride horses that were trained by Sue. Much of her education is due to horses who knew what they were doing. Ali had Leslie Reid’s Olympic horse Mark for a while and she got excellent experience on that horse. She’s had other horses in her life as well to get her to this point she’s at to- day. You have to learn to ride the movements and learn how upper level horses work. Ali has developed a toolbox of training skills. All that started with horses she had the op- portunity to ride, ones who knew
what they were doing and taught her how it should feel. Hopefully we’ll all stand on the sidelines in Rio [at the 2016 Olympics] and cry as she goes down the centerline! My assistant Justin Hardin learned to ride on horses
Warmbloods Today 89
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