Luke 140 won the dressage at Virginia HT despite hot conditions and a jumping saddle. The rider, recovering from hip surgery, took a slower cross-country pace to protect the horse's legs. Luke heads to Great Meadow Four-Star with recent show-jumping at Princeton and a shot at becoming one of the country's top horses.
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Hello, everyone. This is a video intended for the Luke 140 syndicate. What you're watching here is Luke competing at the Virginia Horse Trials in the FEI class, the CCI Three Star short, which was a special event. Virginia Horse Trials put on midweek just to catch up with all the cancelled events. And Luke did a super duper duper test. He was awesome. As you can see here, he is just brilliant in the dressage. He won the dressage. I think it was a pretty strong field. It must have had about 30 horses in it. And I had two horses in the class. This was Luke 140 and then another German horse called Contessa. And this is one of the newer FEI dressage tests. So it was the first time I've done this dressage test. Two international judges and Luke did an absolute pearler of a test. It was bloody hot down there. And luckily for us, the dressage was in an indoor arena, so we were in the shade at least. And I just put the big warm coat on about five minutes before my dressage test. I'm slowly feeling better and better from my hip surgery. Funny enough, the jumping and galloping doesn't hurt my hips too much. It's more the dressage. So this is actually the only about the fourth time I've sat in a dressage saddle. I've been doing all of my dressage in a jumping saddle and lots of rising trot and just pulled the old dressage saddle out for the test. Luke's next big event is going to be the Great Meadow event in Virginia. And I know Phillips obviously competed in me at his last start in Jersey, and I sort of just wanted to get this one event under our belt to prepare him for the Great Meadow Four Star. The Great Meadow event is going to be one class up from this. It's nearly the top of the sport. So this is three star. And then next month he'll compete in his first Four Star. Last week we had Luke at Princeton and show jumping. So I'm still a little bit rusty, to be honest. Still not quite where I was before my surgery, but feeling better and better. And the only way to really get back into the groove of things is to get out there and do it. Luke is absolutely world class in the dressage. I was using, seen this event more of as just a preparation event or a training event and hadn't even practiced this dressage test. And even with not much preparation, he's just world class on the flat. He's an amazing horse. Like, he's a wild man, and he's hot and he's feisty. But then as soon as you go into a dressage test, he settles down, relaxes, and rips her up beautifully. So, obviously we had a great dressage test and the ground was a little bit hard. Cross country, they did their best. They aerated it. And we had a little bit of rain the night before, but I intentionally went quite slow on him cross country. I'm just trying to save his legs up a little bit. And he's a very fast horse. There's no real need to be sprinting him flat out on hard ground, especially at this time of the year. And I'm more just trying to set him up to do well towards the end of the year, you know, my big focus would be to do good at maybe Fairhill or Great Meadow. Well, Great Meadow, it'll just be. I'll probably go a little bit easier there just to get him around and get him qualified. And then Morven Park's got a big, fancy long format or o', Calla, and we'll go flat out then. But the good thing is he's so good at the dressage and jumping, you can actually go quietly in the cross country and still win the. So you saw there. I learned a little bit of a trick with the jumping. Sometimes he has trouble steadying in the jumping. So before you start the round, I often really slow his canter down and then go forward, then really slow it down. So he's sort of listening because as the course goes on, he can get a little bit aggressive. But I think I jumped him in the meter 30 and meter 20 at Princeton last week. I felt a lot more confident jumping him here at this shot, and I thought he jumped really well. The only part he didn't jump well is actually the last line. He gets a little bit keen and strong and almost runs through your hand. He's so excited to get to the next jump. He sometimes takes over, but he's an incredible jumper. He's careful and scopey. We'll see a little bit of his across country in a second. And he was great, actually. I take my head off to Philip. He's been cross country schooling the horse the last few months. And old Philip gets them charging at the fences, which is pretty cool, actually. Luke feels so much more seasoned and experienced in the cross country. Actually, a couple of the lines, I probably actually held him back a little bit too much. And you'll see here, he sees the last fence and makes a run for it. Whoa, Luki, good boy. Still jumps it clean it was hard to get a clear round in that actually so he held his lead and this is part of the cross country we jumped today he went early this morning I think his ride was at 8 o' clock and I wish I jumped this jump again I should have gone on one less stride to this corner here I choked him a bit but he still jumped it then he was good over this skinny and like I said I just ran him slow but he was so far ahead he still won the class so I plan to give Luke a couple of easy days with his training make sure he gets through this alright and then start gearing him up towards the great meadow four star I'd like to thank everyone on the Luke syndicate for getting behind this horse he's really starting to exceed my expectations and I mean I think he could be one of the best horses in the country for years to come so the sky's the limit and I look forward to checking in with you next time.
