Luke won the dressage phase at The Fork trials with a score of 27 and jumped clear, but the rider deliberately slowed the cross-country run to preserve him for Kentucky 4 and Jersey Fresh 4 in the coming weeks. He's working with coaches Peter Wild, Eric Devander, and Silver to build toward those major events.
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Hello everyone. This is a video intended for the Luke 140 Syndicate. Just on my way back from the four course trials at Tryon International Equestrian Centre where Luke did the advanced event. He was in the advanced B section. So it's sort of you could either select the A section or the B section. That the big difference or the only difference actually was the dressage test. This dressage test you're seeing here is basically the equivalent of the five star dressage test. So it's the the hardest of hard dressage tests in eventing and Luke did not disappoint. I got down to try on a day early and typical Luke was a wild lunatic on the first ride. A little bit quieter the next morning and by the afternoon ride before his competition day, he started to settle down. And Luke absolutely fantastic in the dressage. I think he got a score of 27. You know, the exciting thing about this is Luke's pretty new to all these, you know, really difficult movements here, which is the can of half past, the flying changes. And he's so fancy and talented that he just blitzed the field. He won the class in the dress up. So it was a big day on Saturday. We had a dressage test in the morning and then we had to show jump in the evening. We got the show jumping round coming up in a minute and Luke put in an absolute pearler of a show jumping round jump clear. And then today was the cross country and my plan was to not go flat out on him cross country today. Two really, really important events are coming up. In three weeks he goes to Kentucky around the four star short and then two weeks after that is the Jersey Fresh three day event, four star long. And these two events, we sort of definitely want to be very, very competitive at both the events. And went pretty fast on him around the cross country at Bruce's Field last month. So I thought just a little bit of a slower ride cross today would just settle him. And you know, I think it's important that we don't try and go flat tanger on Luke every start. He's really an exciting horse for the future and I think it gets very, very tempting to sort of use them like a motorcycle. And I think it's important to pick and choose the important events for Luke to do well in. Luke was against the stable mate Long Island Tee and they were both good actually. Luke was a little bit better in the dressage but Ludwig was just a tiny bit faster in the cross country so I think they nearly finished on the same score. I think Ludwig eventually pipped him for the win and Luke finished second again. It wasn't a big field. I think it was only eight or nine horses just because they split all the classes up and you know, I was really using the four course trials as a preparation event, another event to educate Luke and to finish second. It was just an added bonus. Silver would be happy with that flying change. So in three weeks time is the Kentucky Horse Park. It's the first time since I've been in America they're having a four star short. So I think it's going to be a really big track, probably the biggest track Luke's seen. It's probably going to be like an eight minute course and you know, I think to have Luke as one of the hopefuls on the American eventing team, I've sort of been told to try and to prove himself there at that event and to really go for it in all three phases. Luke's pretty fit. Even though we didn't go very, very fast today. He was, wasn't huffing or puffing at the end. Pulled up very well and trotted up pretty well before we put him on the trailer to send him home with all the horses that ran at the fork. The vet will go over them tomorrow just to check that everything's in good order. But Luke's been good and healthy so far this year and I suppose a big thing is just gently improving him in all the parts of his training. Last week we had Peter Wild training, came up to Pennsylvania and coached us in the show jumping. And then Eric Devander was there, helped me in the dressage Tuesday and Silver actually helped me on Wednesday and then I gave him a good gallop before we shipped him to North Carolina on Thursday. So now we got the show jumping. It was tricky actually. The, this was probably like 6:45 at night and the sun was just down so the, the actual shadows on the jumps were a little bit tricky. But as you can see, Luke jumped out of his skin. He's a, he's just a fantastic jumper. And the hardest thing with his jumping is to actually stay in balance with him as he jumps. You know, he jumps so high that it's, it's easy to get left behind with your position. You see in the scores he picked up from memory. I think like one time penalty, like I was one, one second or two seconds too slow which, you know, just looking at this video here, I think I could just like there I could sort of be a little bit niftier through these turns. Something to remind myself when I'm riding him at Kentucky is to not to dilly dally too much between the jumps. And it's hard because Lu can get a bit strong and bold. So sometimes you get caught riding him just a little bit quiet to try and keep him settled. But I can definitely clean that up. I think we're in in shape for a really, really good season. As I said, this is one of the best horses I've had in my life, so I'm really trying to take my time and not rush him and trying to prolo his career. So I'm hoping some of you guys can make it down to Kentucky, but I'll check in with you in the next week or two and update you with his training.
