Long Island T - The Fork HT - April ‘21 - with audio

Hello, everyone. This is a video intended for the Long Island Tea Syndicate. We're just on our way back from the four course trials at the Tryon International Equestrian Centre where we took Ludwig down and did the advance B competition. Ludwig was fantastic. This was sort of a big final preparation run leading into the Kentucky three day event. He's doing the five star there, hopefully in three weeks time. And the video you're seeing here is the dressage test that we did on Saturday morning. So we shipped the horses down there on Thursday. I got down there, they had a nice hack on Thursday afternoon. Then Friday, I rode him twice in the dressage on Friday. And then on Saturday morning we did the dressage and then Saturday evening we did the show jumping. And Sunday, which was this morning, we did the cross country. And Ludwig was fantastic in his trot work. And then sadly, he got a little bit nervous and excited in the flying changes, which was a real bugger because he was on track to do a really, really good test. I feel like we have to really get him cranking along in the trot and then by the time we get to the canter, he gets excited. It happens in the show jumping as well. The last couple weeks we've been in Pennsylvan, really trying to put the fitness work into Ludwig. Obviously this event was important just to get a good run under him. It's a little bit hard to get a perfect result at this one just because, you know, we've been galloping every four days. We've been actually concentrating on the Kentucky test, not this dressage test. So really I hadn't practiced this one too much just because I felt like it was more important to focus on the Kentucky Test. But he was a good boy. He was a good boy in all three phases. Obviously this dressage can of work, you see in a minute could have been better. The show jumping was brilliant. Again, he got a little bit excited at the end of the course in the show jumping, but he was a good boy. He jumped a clear round and then cross country. I thought it was smartest not to go full blast on him in the cross country just because he's a horse that competes well if he's not too frazzled up from the event before. So I purposely didn't go flat tanger on him cross country today. He had a good week's training last week. Peter Wild came to our farm in Pennsylvania and coached me show jumping. Eric Devander was there helping me. And then obviously Silva's been on him a couple of times, churning him up on the flat. I'm going to need her to tune him up a little bit more on the flat coming into Kentuck. This is a hard test room because you sort of got to go big in the canter here, which sort of gets him excited through here. And then he almost sort of anticipates this change, but gets a little bit explosive. Actually, that one wasn't too bad. So there's four flying changes. This is a very similar test to the one we're doing at Kentucky. Four flying changes, which he's actually got really, really good changes. But when he gets fired up like this, he can be a little bit nervous. It actually feels worse than it looks. So he came second in the dress arch. I think we got a 29. I think without the tension in the canter, we could have had him lower, you know, Obviously, come Kentucky, I think we'll get down there a week before and really get relaxed and settled in for the dressage. Sadly, I don't have too much video footage or any video footage from the cross country. The cross country course at Tryon, sort of way over the other side of the. From the stables, and we had sort of four horses going cross country, bang, bang, bang. So I had a couple of two or three grooms helping me and. And they were so busy, you know, washing horses down and tacking them up and putting ice on their legs that we. We didn't get a moment to. To have any video. My vet, Kevin Keane, will go over Ludwig with a fine tooth comb tomorrow. He had a little bit of a sore back coming into this one. We fixed that up and gave him some treatment, and I think we're in good shape for Kentucky. I feel like we've got him really, really fit. It's the pinnacle of the sport and one of the, you know, the hardest competitions in the world. So we've got a challenge ahead of us. So the show jumping was tricky. I think we jumped at seven o' clock at night. Peter Wild was good enough to come down, warm me up. And the sun was a real bugger, actually. You know, like, with the shadows and then a few of these jumps, you're, like jumping right into the sun. But I gotta say, Ludwig's. He's a careful horse. He doesn't want to touch the rails. And the thing I liked about this round is he actually got better and better as the course went on. I felt like he was a little bit quick ratty at the beginning of the course and then actually got up in the air and showed some more scope and, you know, jumped a little higher as the course went on, which sort of basically means that he relaxed. So we've got a, you know, intense couple weeks coming up. We had three weeks till Kentucky, three day event. In that time, I think we'll probably gallop him probably three or four more times, really start working on this dressage test and just continue trying to get him jumping well, probably do one more cross country school. I'll probably go easy on him for a couple days here. Just let him recover from this. It's quite a long trip, but we're close, guys. We're close, and I hope some of you guys can make it down there, but if you can't, I think Kentucky is going to be one of the best live feeds you'll see. Just due to the pandemic.