‘Club Steady Eddie’ Video

My name is Michael Pendleton and this is Steady Eddie. And I just wanted to get started and tell you a little bit how I got started riding. I started riding just to do a raffle at school, did lessons and then I took a couple lessons and then it was here history from there. And I started out riding at a dressler's barn in Stanton, Virginia, and then learned how to do young horses and that. And then I came to Boyd's and I've been here for, I think seven years now. And I started out as a working student and then now I'm the assistant rider here. I'm very grateful that this year, at the beginning of the year, that Boyd's owners, Denise and Pierre and George and Gretchen Winterstein, gave me the opportunity to ride Steady Eddie. Boyd imported him over here as a five year old and competed successfully through the five star level. And I just did last weekend, just did my first advance on him. I just want to start off by telling you a little bit my goals of the horse. Like I just ran my first advance last weekend on them and I'd like to take him to the highest level at the Five Star at Kentucky and the new next year, the new Five Star at Fair Hill and quite frank. I'm still a bit green at the upper levels, but that's why I'm grateful for the opportunity to have an experienced horse at the five star level. And I'm kind of in the perfect situation being here with Boyd, where he's already competed the horse around at the highest level, so he knows the horse the best and he can help me guide me the way up the levels. So basically one of the ideas that I had come up with because the condition on me getting the rod on this horse was that I had to start supporting myself a little bit in the horses and coming up with my own support a little bit. So I came up with the idea of the Steady Eddy Club, which is an annual fee of $500 a year and it's tax deductible, but basically you get monthly updates of his training and how he's going and where he's going to go next in competition. And basically it's just to help support a young rider coming through the level. With this $500 a year thing, you can get a Steady Eddy hat and you get monthly updates of his training and you are more than welcome to come to the farm and watch him train and watch him come to the competitions. And basically it is a good way to own a horse at the highest level at smaller cost.

Hello, it's Boyd Martin here. I'm standing next to my number one assistant rider, Mike Pendleton, and we're watching his first advanced horse trial at Millbrook, New York on the mighty Steady Eddy. Jumped through that pretty well, Mike.

Yeah, jump through that.

Awesome. So anyway, long story short, I'm sort of helping Mike get going and he's trying to start his own career a little bit. And Mike's been a very, very hard worker for me. He turned up on my doorstep as a 17 year old. Right from the get go. I knew that Michael had unbelievable amounts of tal and great work ethic and he's been with me for seven years and I'm really, really proud to give him this chance to ride a top level horse. So I thought we'd just have a bit of a yarn while we're watching a bit of competition stuff from Eddie and also a bit of the training at home. Mike, what can the members of the Steady Eddie Club expect to get with their $500 yearly membership?

With a $500 yearly membership, you can expect to get updates once a week of his training and get video updates of him at the competition and watching him training. You're more than welcome to come to the farm whenever he's schooling, doing dressage or cross country schooling with Boyd.

And what about the free hat, Mike?

Get a free hat?

Steady Eddy hat, limited edition. Yep. You can't buy these Steady Eddy hats. You have to become a member and it's a yearly fee, guys. And we're not sure, we're hoping Steady Eddie's got a couple more years left in him. It's the sort of membership where if you don't like it after the first year, you don't have to join up the second year. But if we're sure everyone's going to have a good time being part of this and sort of helping Mike start his career a little bit because it's a small price to pay to get involved in know a top level horse that could definitely compete at the highest level for the country. And one of the big things is it's also a tax deductible donation. We've got it set up so that anyone interested could send their $500 to the American Horse Trials foundation. Or if you don't want to do that, you can send it to Michael Pendleton here at the farm. He lives at the the farm. And all this money will go towards Steady Eddie's expenses. What sort of expenses you got coming up, Mike?

The expenses for his competition and his shoeing and just the general vet care for him going up a lot the levels and stuff.

So it's pretty expensive to run a horse at this level. The FEI competitions, each event sort of is nearly a thousand dollars entry. With stabling, we've got the best blacksmith shoeing him. He needs a little bit of vet care and obviously travel and, you know, the sky's the limit as you can see here. Mike, this is your second. Second. This is actually a four star short at Great Meadow a couple weeks ago now. He's a bit of a wild man on in the dressage. Steady 80s anymore.

Yeah, it gets a bit hot. We got through the trot work luckily here.

I mean, look at the movement. Steady Eddie is a bit of. He's a real thoroughbred. He's a New Zealand thoroughbred. He had about 30 starts and four of them were back to back where the people that had him raced him on a Saturday and then again on a Sunday. And he gets a little bit tense in the dressage. But as you can see here, Mike does a wonderful job at containing him. What events have we got coming up this year?

Mike, he is gonna go to Plantation and then he's gonna end the four star short and he's gonna go to Morven park and just so we can get practice in the dressage and the show jumping and do a combined test there in the four star short and then hopefully we'll take him to Fair Hill and then if all goes well at Fair Hill, he'll do the Jockey Club at the end of the year for one last event.

So our ultimate goal with Mike and Eddie is to obviously get him up to the five star level next year. Plan A would be Kentucky. But we've also got to just understand that Mike's a bit green and Steady Eddie's not the easiest horse to ride. So there's also the exciting news that Fair Hill four star, a five star, is the first five star next year, next year. So Mike's got the opportunity to ride him at the very, very top of the sport on hopefully two occasions next year. I got to tell you, I rode steady 80 for many, many years and he's hard to ride in the show jumping. He, he's a bit feisty, as you can see, but he's got a hell of a jump. And I was quite embarrassed when Mike was here at Great Meadow and pulled out a clean round. And as you can see, these two have, have really gelled, gelled together. And he's, he's definitely likes Mike's ride. Nice and soft. Mike gives him a good ride. So as we said before, this is a, you know, it's a bit of a new thing for Mike to start gaining his own sort of group of owners or supporters. Nothing would make me happier to see Mike progress to being an Olympic or team rider. And I think this horse is going to give him a great experience at the top level. You know, the reality is that Mike's most likely not going to go to the Olympics on this horse, but, you know, I think steady 80 is going to give Mike a hell of a lot of experience so that one of these young and up and coming horses that comes his way, Michael, know the ropes. And what you're seeing here is the cross country live feed to Great Meadow four Star Short, which is a competition. And this horse is a hell of a galloper.

Mike, he was awesome on the cross country last week. He came in a little bit slow here to the water, but then he saved me a little bit and jumped in and was quite good to me, but he was good to the rest of the course.

And if anyone's watching this YouTube video that Mike hasn't personally emailed, we're taking on all comers. We probably need to get Mike about 20 grand a year to cover the costs, the expected costs of Eddie. And if anyone's seeing this video, please get in touch with Mike because it's, it's come one, come all. We want as many people in this project as possible. As I said before, this is not a money grab. We're trying to come up with a way of Mike to campaign this horse as well as he can the next year and hopefully the year after. Eddie's 16 years old, but he's a very sound horse. He's got plenty of plenty left in the tank. He's a bloody good galloper. I had the two minute mark right in the middle of the arena and mate, just talk about your sort of ultimate goals and dreams as a rider. I suppose you've taken this all on.

Yes, I'd like to ultimately just become the best that I can at training the horses at home and getting the best results that I can at the horse show and hopefully one day being able to represent on a team and going to the Olympics and just trying to do my best to produce the horses and make them go the best that they can. Brilliant.

Well, I encourage everyone possible to join Club Steady Eddie.