‘He won’t want to hold my hand’: Lottie Fry on prepping Glamourdale for Herning and the food she eats before she competes
Lottie Fry riding the talented dressage stallion Glamourdale at Aachen.
(Image credit: Imago/PA Images)
The World Dressage Championships kick off in Herning next week and for one member of the British team, Lottie Fry, this will be her first world championship.
Lottie made her senior championship debut in 2019 at the European Championships in Rotterdam, riding Dark Legend, and she admits she “hardly remembers a thing” from that show.
“He wouldn’t like me to hold his hand in Herning, that’s for sure,” laughs Lottie of the eye-catching black stallion. “He wouldn’t want to be seen holding my hand!”
Lottie is based at Van Olst Horses in the Netherlands and trains with five-time Olympian Anne van Olst.
“We’ve been doing a lot of basics in training recently, making sure all the aids are there,” Lottie says. “We have had a few runs through the tests to check we’re ready and Glammy is feeling great every day. We’ve also done lots of hacking and he has been going out for grass so we’re just keeping him happy.”
And what about Lottie’s preparation when she actually gets to these big competitions – what does she get up to on test day?
“If I’m competing later in the day I like to watch a few go in the class, and I would like to have got on and walked around, given him a leg stretch and focused on the tests while I’m walking,” she says. “Then later, before I get back on, I spend quite a lot of time looking at old videos of me riding the test on that horse, going over every little thing. I’ll then sit down with Anne and we will go through the test together, talk about the different lines and all the things I need to be thinking of at that time. We’ll discuss the warm -up and how we’re going to structure it.
“Then the last thing I do is brush my teeth before I go. I’ve always done it and I have no idea why, but it always makes me feel much better.”
Lottie also says that there is one particular type of food she likes to eat before riding at a major event.
“I always try to find some pasta,” she reveals. “Hopefully I’m riding later in the day and I don’t have to make that breakfast, but if it has to be, it has to be. I just always have to have pasta.”
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