Sunburst Equestrian Newsletter - January 2009

January 2009 began in a cool fashion - literally below zero in the coldest English Winter in 15 years! Fortunately the company & hospitality was much warmer and I enjoyed a relaxed beginning to the year in my ‘second’ home at 32 Reybridge near the famous little village of Lacock just out of Chippenham in Wiltshire, UK the home of my English Dressage trainer, Maggie Doel who most notably trained me on Sunburst in the mid-nineties. I had taken 6 weeks ‘time out’ to travel and train in both the UK and Germany and to re-establish my desire to pursue the sport of Eventing at the highest level.

 

 

Maggie’s yard in the UK rarely gets snow...

For me, this specifically meant seeking great improvement in my Dressage riding and training skills and generally a reaffirming of my mental toughness to do whatever it takes to achieve my goals. Although my primary goal as an Event rider was to address my Dressage riding, I had another agenda as well - to check out the European Showjumping scene to see how far we Australians have to go! Critiques of my recent Dressage tests on my Eventing elite squad by Yorkshire-based Dressage trainer (& now the German National Eventing Coach) Christopher Bartle, Maggie Doel and Christian Landolt (Member of the Ground Jury at this year’s Olympics as well as the 2008 Australian International Horse Trials) were very productive, giving me much to think about regarding the underlying training and presentation of the test itself. I also did a bit of preparatory training with Maggie in the UK to get riding again after a 2 week break and get prepared for riding in the cold weather!

My plan in Germany was to work and train with Gilbert Boeckmann (Aus SJ Technical Director/Coach) and then to do some Dressage Training with Martin Plewa (ex-German National Eventing Coach who was also on the Eventing Ground Jury at the last Olympics and World Championships) before looking up a few other contacts and seeing what panned out! Arriving in Germany was aided greatly by fellow Aussie, Phil Lever (who has worked at Boeckmanns for the past 3 years) who picked me up from Bremen airport and brought me to the Lastrup Suites which were 3km away from the Boeckmann stables. Gilbert (or Gilly as he is known) picked me up & took me to the yard the next morning where I was duly impressed by the amazing set-up...it was too much to take in all at once but think many barns (indoor stables with a nice wide central aisleway and outside windows for each stable), a large and a small indoor riding hall (as they call them) and an undercover walker each for both the Jumping barn and Dressage barn, an Eventing barn for Roland Bockmann as his ‘hobby’ when he gets the chance to leave the business of Bockmann transport and a group office buildings and more barns for the Stud or Deckstation Bockmann. Horse numbers were relatively low for that start of the year, with only 30-40 horses in the jumping barn, 20 or so in the Dressage barn as well as Breeding Stallions and youngstock of around 200 horses!

 

The Bockmann name is everywhere…

I was able to ride many of Gilly’s lovely horses and to jump under his watchful eye a ‘schoolmaster’ mare, Genua over some pretty decent fences. Being exposed to such an intense training environment, including watching Gilly ride and train others was an awesome experience! I was also fortunate that Gilly was able to arrange for me to ride in the Dressage barn with resident trainer, Bernard Fischer in the afternoons. Towards the end of my stay at Gilly’s I become enamoured with a young 5yo, Laker so tried him to buy on my last afternoon and then again the next morning as I hadn’t been organized enough to give Gilly’s General Manager, Elke time to arrange to video me riding him!

Following my two weeks at Stall Boeckmann and the lovely Lastrup Suite (which had great Wifi access!), I departed for Muenster where Martin Plewa very kindly picked me up from the train and took me back to his stables via Ingrid Klimke’s yard. When arranging a timeframe to fit into Martin’s hectic schedule, I had told him that I had contacted Ingrid re training but that she was currently too busy...Martin was able to arrange for me to watch her train horses for a morning which was great! Martin’s ‘stables’ (Westfaelische Reit und fahrschule - a state subsidized riding & training school) were extremely impressive with 90 odd stables, two indoor arenas and a training cross country course! Martin was very generous with both his training expertise with me, focusing on my position on the horse and the best way to prepare and train test movements and providing me some lovely horses (especially Damjan, a 12yo Hannoverian) to sit on and train with. His new General Manager, Gunda Reimers, aside from being a lovely person had studied and worked in the UK so was fluent in English which was a huge relief to me after over 2 weeks of not really progressing far in picking up German! Gunda hired a car for me for my last 4 days in Germany where I was able to base at the school and travel to Ingrid’s yard on the Friday and to the German National Training Centre at Warendorf on Saturday to visit Andrew & Bettina Hoy who have recently moved there from the UK. On Sunday, I left Martin’s stables to travel to Krefeld just outside Dusseldorf to watch Jean Behelmanns (current Spanish dressage team trainer) train client’s horses including Prestige, a Spanish Olympic representative!

 

Martin’s ‘stables’ - Westfaelische Reit und fahrschule

My time in Germany ended as it had begun, back at Lastrup Suites and Stall Boeckmann as I had decided that I would like to buy one of Gilly’s young horses, the 5yo gelding Laker by Lord Pezi out of a Landadel mare. Following my time with Jean Behelmanns on Sunday morning I drove my ‘small, cheapish’ hire car (a BMW 525d!) with great delight on the autobahns up Lastrup and then out to Bremen airport that night to pick up Maggie Doel who I had flown over for my little ‘adventure’ on Monday where I vetted and rode Laker again! I trust Maggie’s objectivity and eye in judging a horse so felt another opinion would be worth having...I need to be sure Laker is ‘the one’ to go through the nightmare of logistics to change his Nationality!

Laker - is he the one?

I have now returned to the middle of a record Adelaide heatwave and have only just started to function outside of riding horses at the ends of the day when it isn’t too hot! The upcoming season will be busy, especially as I leave for NZ on February 22 for the Trans-Tasman Showjumping tour and the feature CSI 5* Grand Prix at the NZ Horse of the Year Show. I have just been notified that I’ve made the Australian Team with Koyuna Sun Set! Adam Mellors & Animate, Peter McMahon and KS Genoa and David Dobson & Picabello are the other team members and I’m sure we’ll be joined by other Aussies to have a crack at the big prize money on offer for the 5* Grand Prix! Eventing plans are still up in the air with a trip to Kentucky recently offered but declined, a NZ Eventing World Cup class 3 weeks after the Horse of the Year Show a possibility or I wait till the Sydney Eventing World Cup when I may have had a chance to ride my event horses again!