Commando 3 - Carolina International - March ‘23

This is a video for Dan and Amber. Well, guys, we took Connor down to the Carolina International and we dove straight into the deep end. We entered the four star short class, which is the premier class at one of the, probably the first big exciting event for the year down near Southern Pines in North Carolina. And it's usually the sort of one of the preparation events that some of the top, top horses in the country contest that it's also, it's an internationally recognized event. So they call it an FEI Four star short. Conor had done one of these once before in his career last year in, I think in Belgium. He competed already at this level, so it wasn't his first try at the four star level, but it was our, our first time together and you know, it was a little bit nerve wracking just because we'd only done one sort of prelim horse trial and one intermediate horse trial which was at a sort of backyardy event at Pinetop. They were good cross country courses, but they weren't anything, anything in the spectrum of this competition. And so I didn't quite know what to expect. I had a feeling he'd go well just because he was, you know, I got so much belief in him and, and he did the, the baby event so well, but he definitely actually exceeded my expectations. He did a great dressage test on, let's see, Thursday. He scored a, I think a 25, which is pretty damn good. It's actually really, really good considering how, how young our partnership is and there's room for lots and lots of improvement and we still scored an unbelievable score. And not just sometimes you get great scores at some events and they don't really mean much, but they had. The two judges were international judges, one guy from New Zealand and another American judge that had judged at the Olympic Games and the World Championships and Kentucky five star. So these guys really knew what they were looking at and they loved Connor. So we've been back up in Pennsylvania for the last two weeks, which is good. It's been a bit cold compared to Aiken, but it's a fantastic training facility. And last week Eric Devander flew up and trained me for a couple of days. He was the Olympic coach from last couple years for America and he helped us with the cross country. Then I actually trained Connor with a dressage trainer from Germany, but the German trainer was sitting in Germany, so it was a virtual lesson with Bettina Hoy and she, she'd already helped me earlier in the year with him and it's pretty cool actually. She, she's in Germany. I've got headphones in and my groom sort of videoing me and she's talking to me in real time coaching me, which is great. And she actually rode Connor a little bit as well. So she sort of knows him through and through. And then I also did some show jumping training. My show jump trainer, Peter Wild also flew up on Tuesday of last week to help school him. So we've had some of the best coaching you can get. And it all paid off because he was absolutely brilliant in all phases. And. Everyone was wondering who this new horse was. It was quite interesting at this competition, obviously when the riders compete at the four star level, all the people in the know sort of know their horses and are familiar with them. And all of a sudden I was riding this beautiful black horse or bay horse with a white face and he was the talk of the town and it's pretty exciting actually. He went really, really well. So we got there a day early, which suited, suited Conor well. We schooled him a couple of times before the dressage and then the following day. So this is, let's see, this is Friday, Friday lunchtime. And this was a really, really tough show jumping course. It was right up to the maximum standards and I think there was must have been 30 or 40 horses in the field. And a few of the horses that competed at the world championships last year were in there and there are only a couple of clear rounds and one of them was Connor. He jumped fantastic. See, he's still a little bit fresh and wild, but when he gets to the jump he just pounces off the deck and he jumped. Well, I will say towards the end of the course I got a little bit lucky. You'll see, sort of the last three or four jumps, Connor starts getting a little bit fast and quick and frantic at the fences and I was lucky a bit. So I've still got a bit of work to do in the show jumping of just trying to keep him calm and relaxed. Next week I might take him. There's an indoor jumping show in Ohio that I might take him to and it's more just jumping rounds and practicing these rounds. Obviously he's a brilliant jumper, but it's more just trying to get him settled and relaxed and our timing still not quite there. You see this part of the course here, he starts putting the head in the air and charging and I sort of had to grab and hold him back a little bit and he's a good boy. He still jumped clear, but we're gonna have to improve that because we might not be so lucky in time to come. So anyway, we were, I don't know, I think fifth or sixth after the dressage. Then with that clear round in the show jumping, we moved up to fourth. I was bombarded with media interviews after this, wondering where this horse turned up from. So there's a little bit of pressure coming into this cross country and it was a really, really hard course. It was reverse order. So the higher ranked horses went right at the end of the day and there was a good crowd there. And my plan always was just to coast around. And even coasting around, we actually were only 10 time penalties, so about 30 seconds slow. So I really made an effort not to push him or sprint him and gave myself plenty of time to set him up for the fences. And on top of that they would, you know, it was a really tough technical course, ginormous jumps into water, had everything. Coffin corners was as difficult as you could have imagined. And Connor did it easy. And like this was fence three, it was two strides to a skinny, so he's a good boy. So obviously it's very exciting coming off this event. I think my. I think our next event should be in about three or four weeks time. There's an event of a similar standard at Fair Hill, not far from where I live called Fairhill Horse Trials and it's a national sanctioned event, so it's not an FEI event, it's an advanced horse trial. And guys, I know, I know we were emailing back and forth. I truly think it's in the horse's best interest not to take him to Kentucky. A couple of reasons is if we go to Kentucky, I really think we should try and win it. And I don't think we're in a place where we should be pushing Connor that hard yet. And on top of that, the one we really want to win is Tryon four star long, which is. It's a couple of weeks, it's only two weeks after Kentucky and I'm just worried that running him at Kentucky and then backing him up only 10 days later to do this four star long was. It's a bit greedy and it's going to be a bit hard on their legs. And sometimes this course at Fairhill, the four star short at, I'm sorry, Kentucky, I don't know, I just feel like it knocks their confidence around a bit. I really feel like at the moment me and Connor feel bulletproof, but that can all get unravelled pretty quickly. And I just feel like these first six months we should really take a deep breath and conserve him a bit, get him qualified for five star and really sort of focus on the big picture. It's tempting though to take him to Kentucky just because obviously after this result it really proves that I believe that he's one of the, the top horses in the country. It's interesting actually galloping him. So as part of the fitness program when we're in Pennsylvania is we've got these big long hill grass gallops for the horses. And I've done it twice on Connor now. And poor old Connor, I don't think he's ever seen a hill in his life. Just knowing where he comes from. In the north of Germany, it's very, very flat there and they're the gallop strip that we took him to last week and the week before. It's about a 2 minute 30 hill and I just went up at a slow speed and Connor was all brave and gung ho at the first half of the gallop and about halfway up the hill he was really winded. So I think his body is still gotta get sort of conditioned and to get him truly, truly fit is gonna take, you know, a year probably in my experience. This is a really hard line and you can see kind of just made easy work of that. This is a really, really tough water jump. And kind of just pricked his ears on some really big, big job in here and he just was, he loved it. So anyway, this weekend couldn't have gone better. I just absolutely thrilled with him and everything's just going as well as I could have hoped. So we'll run him again in three or four weeks time at Fairhill.