Five-time Burghley winner and Olympic team medallist Andrew Nicholson shares his thoughts on Barbury and how professional riders progress their horses up the levels
You really know you’re getting old when you don’t recognise anyone in the warm-up at your first event of the season. I wore my glasses the following weekend – and still didn’t! Luckily, at the third – Barbury – the older professional riders were out and about and I did spot some people I know.
Alec Lochore does a good job with the course at Barbury; he knows how to work with the hills, it flows very well and he’d moved some jumps around to freshen it up. The fences were a good size for the novice and intermediate classes, and the ground was beautiful.
We’re meant to have had a very wet winter and spring, yet we all drove our lorries in, parked on grass and drove out. I was there on the Friday and the dressage arenas looked the same leaving as when I arrived. The showjumping was a little bit muddier but still rode well at the end of the day, and you could see broken grass at a distance on the cross-country but it still rode like good turf.
Mark Phillips wrote in his last column that something was wrong somewhere when so many British-based riders are going abroad at this time of year. Why aren’t we looking at Barbury to put on a CCI4*-S for them? Owners like going to Barbury, where they can easily watch everything. The bank was full of people when I was there and it felt like there was a real buzz.
British Eventing should swallow its pride and beg Musketeer to put on an international there. It’s one of the few places that could cope with wet weather and still look like a serious event with good conditions.
If riders really want a four-star so early in the season and are organised enough to go to Kronenberg, the sport here should be catering for that and trying to keep riders supporting British events.
Making progress
However, I couldn’t work out why so many riders were going so slowly across country at Barbury.
It was perfect ground, and I came away thinking, is it because they have more galloping to do here and therefore they waste time setting up for the fences, whereas at twisty, turning tracks they happily wing them round? Or is it because riders are deliberately creeping along because they believe they should be “thinking of the future”?
I have always thought you should go at the correct speed for the class, whether it is novice, intermediate or advanced, especially when the going is excellent. I’m sure they have their reasons, but I don’t understand them!
When I’m warming up for the dressage on my novice horse, I look across at the others and think that mine definitely doesn’t feel the way theirs look to be going. Then I find out that lots of them are very experienced horses. Do you really need to start at that level every season these days?
That, and the fact that so many of the professional riders start their horses in 90cm classes now. I’m not sure this is a good idea. Surely it delays the whole procedure of progression up the levels? And the more little stuff you do, the less confidence you have in the horse’s ability, I think. You doubt yourself, and then start doubting the horse too.
I’m not talking about amateurs who are competing sheerly for fun – I’m talking about proper professionals who aren’t moving their horses up through the classes quickly enough. There was a time when BE100 and novice were simply there to get horses going in a dressage arena, and used to jumping a course, not as a means to an end in themselves.
For the vast majority of my career my five-year-olds started at novice, and by their third event I expected them to go inside the time across country. And all they’d done was go cross-country schooling beforehand. Sure, I fell off some of them, but most of them went on to have long careers. It’s something to think about!
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