It’s the middle of a week in February, and depending on where you live, the weather outside might be somewhere between mid-cold and bone-chilling, with a sky of mid-gray to sunny-but-not-warm. It may, perhaps, be time for a little horse-based, mid-week inspiration from the Olympians among us.
Let’s check in and see what some of them are doing:

On a crisp day in England, British Olympian Charlotte Dujardin decided to sweep the mothballs off of one of her retirees and take the old man on a little ride. For funsies. And the rest of her social media world learned that, at 20, her won-all-the-things champion Valegro can still count up to—and well past—his age in tempi changes. (That’s 34 changes in a row, by our count.)

Here in the U.S., our own eventing champion Boyd Martin is helping, or possibly hazing, his new assistant rider Diego Farje by encouraging him to take mid-winter ice baths. Martin is, in fact, a well-documented proponent of ice baths for their reported anti-inflammatory and heart-rate reducing benefits. We’ve not yet heard if Farje, a Peruvian eventer who represented his country in the 2019 Pan American Games, agrees:

And in Sweden, Tokyo Olympic team gold medalist and 2021 world No. 1 show jumper Peder Fredricson, who just celebrated his 50^th birthday at the end of January, was being properly roasted by his team at Grevlunda Fredricson Show Jumping, who mockumented a day in “his” life, doing regular barn stuff like walking distances—trademark notepad in hand—and rasping the feet of his famously barefoot horses. The stuff we all do—sort of. (We don’t know what the real Fredricson was doing while this was being made; it’s entirely possible it was something mundane like schooling a horse or paying bills.)

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A post shared by Peder Fredricson (@pederfredricson)

So grab your giant golden trophy—or your second travel mug of coffee—go forth and conquer your February goals.