Commando 3 - Fair Hill - April ‘23

Hello, Dan and Amber and everyone at Yankee Creek Farm. Yankee Creek ramp. Should I say we had a fantastic event with Connor at Fairhill Horse Trials over the weekend. This is an epic competition. It's basically the equivalent degree of difficulty of the the event that we did at the Carolina International. It wasn't as glitzy, there wasn't as many spectators or tents. But the competition and the course was equally as challenging and the terrain actually was quite hard. It's a really big hilly course and I love it. I really feel like it builds stamina and endurance into the horses. And thinking back to Connor's career, I don't think he's seen many hills in his life. One thing I've noticed started galloping him up the mountains in here in Pennsylvania is he's used to flat land, being from Hamburg, Germany and slowly but surely we're turning him into a racehorse. This was a competition as we prepare for the Trihon four star long and he was freaking awesome. As you can see, the dressage is getting better and better. He is as good as they come on the flat. He won the dressage. I think we got a score of 24, which is a phenomenal score considering, you know, how green we are or how new we are to each other. He's got such flamboyant paces, he's got a real uphill look and he's relaxed too, like he's a high energy horse. But he's also, he's not an idiot. You know, he's a calm, he knows how to take a breath. There's still lots of room for improvement. You'll see here after the extended walk he sort of gets a little bit high in his mouth and his head. And as time goes on, we've got to improve this little bits and pieces there. So we're going to get an even better score than 24 with things to come. Sadly in Pennsylvania we've had a real dry spell. We haven't had any rain for the last couple of weeks and usually this event every year is good, soft, spongy turf and this year it was a little bit hard. So, you know, obviously got a long term plan with Connor and winning this event was very, very possible if we chose to do it. But I'm really looking after this guy and I know I've said this a lot to you guys but I really, in all my experiences of having these top, top class horses is we've got to push him and run him fast when it really, really counts. And this weekend was more of a Fitness run, an education, another opportunity to build partnership and we did that. The guy that designed the cross country course is the same Design for Kentucky three day event, a guy called Derek DeGrazio. He was also the designer at the Olympic Games in Tokyo and big events like Burley, so it was no joke. Big, big course and 70% of the horses, the course is going uphill. But again, I just wanted to look after Connor's legs and not overdo it saying that our next event is a big one. Our next event is the try on four star long and it's time for me to roll my sleeves up and push him on a bit. It's going to be perfect ground and it's a qualifying event for five star, qualifying event for the Olympic Games and where we want to win it. So we've spent four or five months here building a good partnership and we're definitely gelling and now it's time to try and be successful. Connor's going to be an easy horse to be successful on. He has all the attributes of a, a champion and it's just my job to get him fit and then when it's crunch time to really ride him in a competitive way. We had a good week's training with the Olympic dressage judge, Peter Gray here. Also the team coach, Eric Devander helped us and we also did some dressage training with one of the best dressage coaches in the world in Germany, Bettina Hoy, who trained us actually the day before the competition virtually, so we're not taking any shortcuts in the show jumping. My goal over the next couple of months is to try and he jumps a little bit with his head up, which he still jumps the jumps clear. But I feel like if I can get him to sort of stretch his neck down, he'll jump in a better technique like a little bit rounder and drop his neck. When his head's a little bit high, he sort of has to jump even higher just to get his front legs out of the way. So there's no magic out there. We just got to gently chip away at it and we can't change him too much too quickly. I think he's obviously been successful the way he's going for many, many years and he's had a different rider for the bulk of his career. And one of the keys here is to try and emulate his pass rider, Louise from Sweden, and then slowly but surely formulate him to the system the way I like him to go, which is not far different here. The end of the course here he gets a little bit gung ho and I feel like I have to pull him back a little bit. So we've got to work on that. But we don't have much time to go. We've got three weeks till try on Four Star Long. And he was a little bit spooky at that early jump, so I cracked him with the whip. I knew that we've got a big challenging course ahead of us and he was a little bit cautious, so I gave him a little touch with the stick just to get him going. And this is about a third of the way through the course and you can see by now he was humming along. Anyway, we finished in fourth place, which was a good effort. Some top horses were in the class. And the most exciting thing is he performed well again and he trotted up beautifully sound this morning and we've got him fit. I think we're in great shape as we, as we come into try on Four Star Long in a couple of weeks time. And you know, I really think that this could be a horse of a lifetime.