PrintIn this series, the Chronicle follows six riders as they seek to fulfill their Olympic dreams in Hong Kong in 2008.
After my first trip to Rolex Kentucky in 2006, I kind of looked ahead. I’d been doing the [U.S. Equestrian Federation] developing riders program with Kim Severson for a few years, and my goal was to get on the team training list.
Of course, once you’re on the training list, you want to make the team, and it was my goal to be looked at as a candidate for the 2007 Pan Am Games.
But Gryffindor had a minor injury while training for the Pan Am Games, and we had a very quiet fall. I started him back on flatwork in November and started jumping in December. I was walk hacking him the entire time—there was no stall rest or time off. He came back great—he feels and looks great.
Now I’m down in Aiken, S.C., to take advantage of the team training sessions, and we’re working a lot on dressage and show jumping.
We’re going to start the season at Southern Pines (N.C.) in March, on the way back home to Virginia, and then go to the CIC***W at The Fork (N.C.), then Kentucky. The idea is to do enough so that he’s ready for Rolex Kentucky, since I have to get him qualified, but not to do so much that I use him up.
It’s been a long relationship with him, and that’s the advantage of knowing him so well. He’s 14 this year, and I got him when he was 5.
As far as cross-country goes, he knows his job well. We have plenty of time to work on the parts that need improving—the dressage and show jumping—and then get the kinks out on cross-country, just make sure we have steering and brakes. I trust him a lot on cross-country. He’s my first advanced horse, and he’s pretty amazing out there, so it doesn’t bother me to just run him two times this spring.
The Work Picks Up
I was really excited heading into the training sessions. Lauren Hough is someone we hadn’t ridden with before, and Laura Kraut really helped with our show jumping last year. Capt. Mark Phillips helped us immensely last year, and I was looking forward to more. I wanted to really show improvement, to show that I did my homework.
Parts of the training were really good, and parts were a little kick in the pants. It makes me work harder, to do my homework all the more. I would have liked to have been working on my dressage all fall and winter, and we have to make up for that time off now.
We’ve been focusing on show jumping. We’ve changed his balance to be more up, which definitely helps. I feel I can ride him more forward from his hind end and he has more power off the ground.
