In this personal competition vlog, the rider takes his high‑energy horse Luke to the Morven Park International Horse Trials in Leesburg, Virginia, competing in the Open Prelim division. The video shows Luke’s nervous, “fired‑up” dressage test, which results in a low score of 39 due to his wild behavior and distractions. In the show‑jumping warm‑up Luke remains erratic, knocking a fence and prompting coach Peter Wildey to note the rider’s excessive air time. The cross‑country round is calmer after Luke burns off energy, but the rider incurs time penalties while prioritising soundness. Throughout, the rider outlines a training strategy to build Luke’s fitness, aiming for a five‑star event the following spring, with specific aspirations to attend a Maryland five‑star test and a Toronto indoor competition. The narrative balances candid reflections on Luke’s temperament with concrete plans for future competition and conditioning.
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This is a video for the Luke 140 syndicate. Well, everyone, we took Luke down to Leesburg, Virginia to the, to the Morvern Park International Horse Trials. I put Luke in the open prelim division. The dressage test you're seeing here was Saturday morning early and Luke was breathing fire. He was very, very nervous and excited. Well, not nervous, just fired. Unfortunately, this is Luke all over. So I don't think he means to be naughty or bad. He's just such a high energy horse that when you're at these small little shows that it's, it's hard for him to contain himself. Anyway, it wasn't obviously a bit of a wild dressage test here. You see him throwing in a bit of a buck there. Anyway, obviously my main goal this year was to, you know, I think we've got to get through this. The, the first couple shots we always take Luke to. He's just a lunatic and I really wanted to sort of flush that out of his system this year since coming back into full work so that by the time we get to January and February next year that he's already been out competing. And I'm hoping that once we go to some higher level events next winter that Luke's not so fired up. But it's an. Anyway, he was quite the character in the dressage and in the show jumping warm up and by the time we got to the cross country we burnt off quite a lot of energy and he was a good boy. My biggest focus is next season. We've got to aim him for a big five star in the spring next year. And to do that we've got to build his body up, his fitness up, which takes months and months also like buildies, you know, he's such a feisty animal. I think doing a couple little shows slowly and trying to make them as boring as possible will benefit from it next year. So we had a terrible dressage score, obviously. I think we got a 39, which honestly was, was it should have been a 49 or a 59. It was a very generous score. You see the extended walk here, nice and free and then he sees the white horse coming by and then all of a sudden, whoa. And what do you do? Come on, Luke, settle down. And again, I, I don't think he's being naughty. I just think this is him. He's like this every day at home. It's. I've fallen off him a couple of times this year just riding dressage. When he gets a, you, a truck or a car goes by or There's a noise go by it really sets him off. So anyway it's this is the horse we have and the thing I've always got to remind myself is that when we get to a five star like the Mullen last year, that power and energy and sort of mongrel that he's got into him all of a sudden becomes our a wonderful attribute when the big fat shiny, slow thinking warm blood start tir at about three miles old, Lucas is just getting settled in. So he's a champion horse for the high levels. Unfortunately for the smaller classes he's a real handful. I'm not going to show my wife this video but I'm going to try and talk her into riding the test ride at Maryland five star next year, next week. I'm sorry and so I think that's on Thursday lunchtime. I'll we talk silver a little bit. I think it'd be good for Luke to get out to Maryland five Star and go through the five star test. Anyway, I've still got to convince her to do it. So this is the Luke's showjumping. He was equally as wild in the warm up and he settled down. I sent this video to my show jumping coach Peter Wildey. He said that I'm sitting back in the air a little bit too much and I tried to explain to him that the jumps you didn't see he was landing in the warm up and throwing in a bit of a buck. So sadly we bumped out fence two behind with his hind legs. I was just a. I wasn't quite sure how Luke was going to land and react on landing so I probably sat back a little bit too much in the air anticipating him to be out of control. Cross country we've got a little bit of the cross country from Sunday morning on the video like New Jersey, I just cantered around nice and easy. There's a small chance I might take him up to Canada in about three or four weeks to do a competition at the there's an eventing competition, an indoor competition at the Toronto royal fair. In 2 miles take exit 91B onto I692. We'll double check his legs and make sure my vet thinks it's a good idea. So this is the cross country and I really just tried to stay at this nice even slow pace the whole way around the track and we picked up a boatload of time penalties. But obviously soundness is important and I also think it's important for Luke just to go really fast a couple times a year at the big shows. I think if you rode him fast all the time, it wouldn't be very beneficial. Anyway, guys, so happy to be riding Luke. He's a handful, but he's an incredible horse. And he jumped around the course. Fantastic. And I really believe we've got a fantastic horse for next year.
