“He’s still my idol. It was nearly a marriage – we sort of loved each other and sort of hated each other at times. He just was that special little horse and he catapulted me right up into the stars and kept us there for quite a long time,” says Caroline in an interview on this month’s Horse & Hound Podcast, supported by Baileys Horse Feeds.
Although he became one of the most consistent performers on the five-star circuit, Lexi Jackson and her mother Janey MacKinnon’s Lenamore – known as Ed – wasn’t the easiest horse to ride. He was produced up to the top level by Lexi before she gave Caroline the ride.
“Lexi and Janey did the most fantastic job and actually, right the way through his career, Janie always did the first part of his fitness work,” explains Caroline. “They were always so involved in what we did with him from day to day. He was very naughty and I remember seeing him bucking with Lexi – not dirty, just naughty, just full of it.
“He was the best evader of work, although he worked himself quite hard. Janie always used to ride him when she was getting him fit and lead something else, whereas I would ride something else and lead him just because he jogged the whole way. So in one way he was very within himself with the way that he went, in another way he was actually quite hard on himself because he kept themselves so fit.”
To begin with, Caroline says the fact Lenamore was so athletic allowed him to jink and run-out across country.
“We had our little difficulties on the way – the little run-outs here and there – and it did take us a wee while to grow that relationship and for him to trust me and for me to trust him on the lines,” remembers Caroline. “Even to this day, I still walk lines and think, ‘On Lenamore I’d be riding this a little bit differently’ because you had to be just that little bit of cuter with him, so he was tricky in that way – but he was pretty cool.”
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At that 2010 Burghley Horse Trials, Caroline says Lenamore “absolutely performed beautifully”.
“The whole week was like a dream come true. It was like the Lenamore that we didn’t know – he cantered up the centre line having done the most beautiful test and I sorted patted him thinking, ‘Something’s got go wrong at some stage’. But thankfully it didn’t – we had an absolutely foot-perfect week and there wasn’t one bit of him I could even say needed tweaking that week. It was unbelievable.”
Hear more about Caroline’s Lenamore memories as we enjoy this week’s Defender Burghley Horse Trials by tuning in to episode 140 of The Horse & Hound Podcast here, or search “The Horse & Hound Podcast” in your favourite podcast app.
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Pippa is a true eventing geek and has been H&H’s eventing editor since 2005. She has first-hand experience of competing up to British Eventing intermediate and international CCI2*-L level, and has worked in the industry on a top event yard. Pippa enjoys nothing more than immersing herself in the sport at the highest level, reporting from the five-stars and international championships, including the Olympics.
