Luke 140 - Upperville Jumping Show - June ‘21

This is a video for the Luke 140 syndicate. We took Luke down to Upperville Jumping show in Virginia. The last few days went down there and jumping coach Peter Wild was there. Philip took his top horses down there. It was a really productive couple of days. What you're seeing here is the first class that we jumped Luke in. It was the meter 20 on day one. And this is sort of the first competition that we've taken Luke to off the farm since his big win at New Jersey. So it was good to go to a competition that, you know, the result really didn't matter at all. And what our goal here was to try and get Luke quite relaxed and obedient and sort of chill in the ring. Obviously he's a very, very good jumper. So pretty much all the rounds here we weren't trying to win the class or jump clear at all costs. We were more trying to get Luke just to take a breath and not be too aggressive in the way he attacks the fences sometimes. I have to say this, the first day we're watching Wednesday here, he was, you don't really see it in the video. He was a little bit nervous and a little bit on edge and like I rode the round like with about five or six time penalties here. This is a mistake here by the rider going for a big long one at the end. Luke was a good boy taking it, but that was a big no, no. Okay, so this is later in the day. This is the meter 30 class and this is about the height which I think the Olympic Games is going to be now. It felt big. This is bigger than what we experienced at the competitions in eventing. So it was sort of good bit of pressure that we're. The jumps are wider, a bit taller and I felt like Luke was good in this but still a little bit strong and goy at the jumps. He still jumped clear and he hates touching the fences. But a few of the lines where he. Especially when they're sort of connected to each other, like these first two fences, he sort of runs in a little bit deep. So we're just really working on trying to get him to slow up a little bit, especially on the takeoff stroll. And here that was a seven stride line and Peter got me to do it in a steady eight. Just trying to add a stride and get Luke to woo down a bit. Didn't really work because you see in this combination here, he starts getting a bit racy as the head goes up and he's such a good boy. He still jumps the jump really really well, but we're trying to. Trying to get that little rush out of him. So actually the next day, which is Thursday, which we're about to see, we actually put a slight sharper bit in his mouth here. He's got a jointed Pelham bridle. And today on Thursday, we used the straight bar Pelham. And again we really went to this show not trying to. We're trying to give him calm experiences at the competition. So we on the scoreboard, we had a boatload of time penalties just by taking wide turns and adding extra strides. By the time we get to Great Meadow and hopefully Tokyo, he's just a little bit more chill. So this is the meter 20 on this morning, Thursday, and I thought he jumped unreal. Like he was just a little bit more relaxed, slightly more settled in and he jumped higher. And I think I was a little bit more relaxed here. So my instructions on this round was to actually give him a little walk break halfway through the round. So we figured out about halfway through the round, Luke starts turning into a monster and getting a bit racehorse like. So here we just actually mid round, slowed it down, took a walk step or two and then picked up the canter and did the second half of the course. And I felt like it really worked. Like it. It's almost like a snowball effect. He gets going and now it's almost like that was jump one and two again. So I was really, really pleased. Next week we've got a dressage show at Great Meadow. We're going to do the Olympic dressage test with Q, Thomas and Luke. And then I think the week after that weekend we're off to Princeton to do another jumping day like this. And then the final outing, Meadow. So at the moment everything's going to plan.