Fedarman B - Fair Hill - April ‘23

This is a video intended for the Annie Goodwin Syndicate. Oh, guys. We took Bruno out to the Fairhill International Horse Trials and we took him in the advanced division, which is basically the equivalent of a four star short. I love Fairhill. It's a really, really sort of big, long, tough course. It's designed by Derek DeGrazio, the same guy that designs Kentucky three day event. And it's not far from my house. Unfortunately, we have had a really weird spring. We haven't had any rain for about 10 days. So usually it's really, really good footing here, but this year it's quite dry and the cross country was a little bit hard. That being said, Bruno just needed another good run. We're still months away from our major goal, Le Mullen five star. That's in June, so he still doesn't need to be going flat tanger at these events. So he just needed a good run. It was going to be a great education just because, you know, it's a great course designer and it was also a fantastic fitness run there. You know, 80% of the course is galloping uphill and it was a great run for Bruno. I had a bunch of horses in the class, so Bruno was my very first horse of the day. He went first thing in the morning on Friday for the dressage at 8am we did a decent test. I worked him the day before virtually with Bettina Hoy in Germany. And we worked on this test. To be honest, he was a little bit nervous and edgy. It wasn't a best test by saying that we scored a. A 30. We got lots of sevens and eights. Unfortunately, they've. In this particular test, they've got these warp pirouettes which we, we messed up a little bit. And the great news is there's no warp pirouettes in the five star test. So I'm not too bothered by it. He finished seventh after the, after the dressage, out of a field of 16. So he's about midfield. And then, typical Bruno. We've still got our unblemished show jumping record together. Show jump, fantastic. And then he gave me a great round in the cross country. Like I said before, we were using this event just as a. You can see I lost a couple points there. He was thinking we're supposed to canter. You know, we're using this event as a good education, a fitness run and really making sure that Bruno gets through these preparation events unscathed, which he did. He trotted up beautifully this morning, the day after the cross country, so he's good and healthy. In three weeks time, we're going to run him at the four star short at Tryon International. That's going to be our last run before Lemulin. Now I think that's a time where we should start actually sprinting him a bit. It should be fantastic footing. It's on a golf course there that's irrigated and it would be a Lemulin type course. A bit of a twisty tourney course, similar to what we went through at Buccalow. In our training we, you know, really starting to step it up a gear in the dressage, trying to work on the five star movements, which is pretty similar to what we had last year. And it's getting more and more confirmed. I mean, have a look at this flying change. It's now they're quite automatic. If you remember, last year we were sort of leaping around and now me and Bruno have definitely on the same page when it comes to all these little details in the dressage. Sort of hard training him a little bit because our goal is a little bit further away than a lot of the other top horses in the country. I've really tried to pace myself in his training and not push him too hard. You know, I think the, the big thing for Bruno now is to be super competitive at the really important events and I fall into this trap of going really hard on him every start. And I know sometimes it sounds like a little bit of a loser's mentality, but, you know, I do think there's greatness coming up for Bruno and we've got to, you know, we want him around for years and years. Eric Devander was at our farm leading up to this event and he actually helped me show jump him earlier in the week and he, he was fantastic. We actually did a bit different to Peter. We, we worked more on exercises in improving Bruno's technique and it really worked. I felt like Bruno jumped in a really good shape. If you can see sort of his hind legs and his chest and his wither, really making a good round shape in the air and he's, I don't know, like he's jumping with confidence. In the past, Bruno's drifted a little bit to the right in the air over the, over the jumps and it's still not perfect, but he's, I feel like he's a bit straighter and sometimes he jumps so big that he sort of wanders off to the right hand side of the jump to give himself a little bit more room. So we've been trying to work at slowing him down and keeping him straight and trying to encourage Bruno not to jump so big. It's amazing what a year's partnership can do. Bruno went to this exact event 12 months ago and it's night and day. The, the partnership that we formed in the cross country. Again, you can just see me just going nice and easy in the cross country, but the, the confidence he felt and the bravery he felt over all the fences was really good. I mean, this particular jump is a real five star question where we jump to skinny. And then a galloping five strides to a right corner. Big three strides to a right corner and Bruno just jumped it. Fantastic. It was great seeing a number of the Annie Goodwin syndicate there on the weekend cheering us on. And I really think we're in good shape. Like I said earlier, we've got one more big event which is at try on in three weeks time in the four star short. And I think we should try and be a bit quicker and work him a little bit harder on the cross country there and, you know, just gently keep working at improving his dressage and keep working at getting him show jumping. Well, I mean, he's such a great show jumper. That's, that's easy on my end, but we're in great shape and I feel like we're on a good path to success. Come Le Moulin.