Luke 140 final preparations for Luhmühlen - June ‘23

This is a video for the Luke 140 syndicate. Well, guys, I thought I'd put a quick video together of some of the training of Luke as we make our final preparations towards Le Moulin. Five star Luke pulled up fabulously after try on four Star Short a couple of weeks ago and he's been doing really, really well as we sort of prepare him for the. The biggest event of his life. This is a jump school. This is his final jump school here in America with Peter Wild. We did some grid work and then jumped a bit of a course. Luke will travel up to New York to JFK airport on Wednesday, fly through the night and land in Belgium Liege airport on Thursday morning. And then he'll ship to Meredith Michael Beerbum's farm, I think it's in Bremen, and he'll hang out and recover there from the flight with Steph. And then I'll be reunited with him next. Next Monday, a week from today. Luke's been training well. Peter Wild was kind enough to come down and give all the horses a jump school. Luke was good, he's been working really hard, so he was pretty well behaved today. We did a few of these gymnastic exercises and then did a little bit of a coursework with him. And obviously Luke's a fantastic jumper and the. The biggest challenge we had is trying to sort of keep him rideable, which, funny enough, the more work we put into Luke, the more relaxed he's getting. Peter actually hopped on him and jumped him through this grid here. He wanted to see if he could get Luke a bit higher in the air using these sort of V poles. Obviously Peter's a master and was probably a little bit better than me on the landing side of the jumps of just packaging Luke back together. And when I hop back on, Luke was jumping fantastic. The show jumping at Le Moulin is always tough, but we're on a fantastic jumper in Luke and Peter Wild's actually going to fly over and help us warm up on next Sunday, which is obviously a huge benefit. I've got two other horses, Fetamin B and Sesta Leg. So Bettina Hoy will be helping with the dressage along with Silver, and then Peter will be there Sunday to help with the show jumping. Speaking of Bettina, Bettina is in America at the moment, so she spent last Thursday and Friday at the farm helping me in the dressage. It was brilliant. The first day we just did sort of relaxation work, suppling work, and then this is Friday's training, which we really concentrated on the five Star B test, which is the test Luke will be doing next Thursday or Friday at Le Moulin and he's doing the test well. Silver and I've been working hard on all the movements and I think he's going to put in a ripper of a test. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the people in the syndicate that donated some funds towards Luke's upcoming expenses. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. It's a huge expense getting Luke to, to Lumoulin with the flight and then getting grooms and paying coaches to come over. And I know it's beyond our syndicate agreement, but I really appreciate everyone that chipped in. For anyone watching this video that is feeling charitable, we're still miles short of what we're going to be expecting in our expenses coming up, so anything's greatly appreciated. It's a huge expense going there and like I said, this is a big stepping stone towards our dream of competing at the Olympics. So I'm very, very grateful for anyone in the group that can, can put some of their money towards a trip. I think Luke's going to be very competitive there. He doesn't have a weak phase. He's, he's brilliant in the dressage. He's a fabulous cross country horse and a wicked good show jumper. I mean, the, the biggest challenge I'm going to have is, is be to be trying to ride Luke as fast as I can cross country without him getting out of control. I did a bit of cross country schooling 10 days ago and that's our biggest thing, is sort of working on going really fast and then slowing Luke down right in front of the jump and then angling fences and trying to jump fences out of stride. Luke, he loves cross country, but he loves it too much where he gets a bit too keen, which I'm sure some of you saw the video from Tryon. He was overly enthusiastic. But as you can see here, I think Luke's going to do an unbelievable dressage test. Obviously I've got to ride him well and prepare him well, but we're well prepared. So this is Luke just in the pond. We had a big gallop on Saturday. We're very, very fortunate that we can use an all weather gallop up here. This is Sunday morning. It's a sort of a recovery day for all the horses. Sesta legs in front, I'm on Luke in second and on cue, who's going to Bromont this week, is third and Bruno, our other Le Moulin entry, is the fourth horse there and, you know, it's a recovery day. I also think it's good for the horses to do a bit of everything, works a few different muscles. And I do think the horses sort of enjoy it going out as a group. And we've been sort of pushing them so hard and the galloping and then the dressage and the jumping. It's nice for them to have an easy day between some of those hard workouts. We took a few horses up to Sogarty's last week, met Peter Wild there, and we jumped a. A meter 20 round with Luke and a meter 30 round. And I'm glad we did two rounds because Luke was wild and this is the meter 20. And I'm trying to do my best to keep Luke nice and quiet in this big ring. And as you can see, he jumps well, fence one well, and then he. He tears off and tries to throw me off. So I was using this as a bit of a schooling round and I did a nice quiet circle here and regained Luke's brain and then carried on with the course. Now, remember, Luke's going to be show jumping after the cross country when we get to Le Moulin, which is a huge benefit of jumping Luke when he's a. When he's a little bit tired. But thankfully we jumped two rounds and the meter 30 round, which is obviously 10cm bigger than this round. And it was Luke's second trip in, which was about an hour after this, this round. So it worked out to. To be perfect. He was a bit wild and lit up here. And then we got a redo, which is we. We don't get a redo in eventing. We get one chance at it. So it was awesome at being up at Sogaty's and getting him in this big ring and spooky jumps in a big course. You can see him still being a bit keen there. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing some of you guys over there in Germany. It's one of the biggest events in the world. And for those of you guys that aren't going over there, there's a great live feed which I'll obviously be sending you the information on. And you could be following Luke's rounds. My guess is his dressage will be Thursday or Friday and then cross country Saturday and show jumping Sunday. And we're going over there. We mean business. We've looked after Luke and coddled him and protected him and taken a long time rehabbing him after his injury. And now it's time to really go for it. And Luke is fighting fit. He's in great condition, and I really feel like we have a better horse than what we had before the Tokyo Olympics. You can see this is a meter 30 round, and Luke did it beautifully. Peter got me to try and open him up and not ride him so slow where he sort of fires at the jump, but to try and hold a little bit more of an even pace. Once again, thank you to all the generous members of the syndicate that chipped in for our trip. Greatly appreciate it. I don't take it for granted and very, very thankful for your. Your kind donation. And, yeah, we mean business, guys. It's nearly crunch time. I feel like Luke's in great shape and we're ready to rock.