Story – Chris Hector & Photos – Roz Neave and Peter Orr
Megan Jones is not just a top international competitor, she is also building a solid reputation as a coach and mentor to promising up-and-coming riders, like the New Zealander Abby Lawrence. Although ‘coach and mentor’ sounds way more formal than the friendly laughing relationship Megan has with the young Kiwi.
Megan was at the Lakes and Craters Three Day Event, helping Abby and Pseudonym as they saddled up for their first ever Three Star, Three Day event.
We started with Megan to analysing Abby’s dressage test – a test that produced a 60.6 penalty total to leave them in 4th place going into the cross country. As you might expect, Meges’ dressage critique is a little more blunt than you might expect from a dressage dressage coach. She doesn’t pull punches:
“He’s really stiff to the right, so we tried to get him a fraction softer there so we could do something that resembled a half pass right – normally he just goes sideways across the arena. That worked quite well.”
Dealing with super fit eventers requires a certain amount of tact:
“We didn’t do any changes outside the arena because the changes get him quite excited, so we did a lot of counter canter with him, a lot of leg yielding in the counter canter – pushing him around lots so he doesn’t change. In the last couple of tests he’s done he changed early and got excited in the counter canters – and stiff. This time around he really stayed quite calm in the canter, the counter canter was good, and the changes were rough but clean. His hard side is the first change, and that was actually quite good, normally he is late with that, and takes off. The changes were actually a bit like in two parts, but clean in two parts and he stayed quite calm.”
“The shoulder-ins didn’t really happen because he got strong across the short side, then he has the tendency to grab the bit and want to go, and Abby couldn’t get him into the corner properly to get the shoulder in. But they did get an okay half pass. Then he did his trot thing, when he turns on the centre line and trots on his face. We’d done quite a lot of work on that, but he still fell on his face.”
Still Abby is relieved to get the dressage over…
The dressage was the hardest part?
“Absolutely – for me and him.”
You do full time horses?
“Yes, I’ve been doing it for almost three years.”
So you were a terrible disappointment to your parents…
“No, Mum loves horses.”
Megan is quite pleased with the combination’s progress:
“He really is still a work in progress, he’s really fancy, he goes forward, he has lovely paces but he is really stiff. Two years ago Abby’s brother was riding him and he was really wild.”
So we are blaming the brother?
Abby comes to his defence: “No we are not blaming the brother, the horse has always been like that. He was bred in the Waikato, he is owned by Jane and Alice Collins. He is by Hahndorf, Nicola Fyffe’s stallion. He was bought as a six-year-old for my brother. When he got really busy with work, I took him over, that was three years ago.”
He’s your first three-star horse?
“Yes. I have been in Australia for the past three months, just to stalk Megan basically, it’s the second time I have worked with her, but the first time, I didn’t have a horse. My aim is the three-star World Cup at Kiki, three-star at Taupo, and ideally, the four-star in Adelaide next year. We’ll just have to see how that goes.”
What’s it like working with Megan?
“Hard work, but it is very rewarding. I’m learning new stuff every day. Megan puts things in an easy way to understand, she puts it in your language.”
How many times have you walked the cross-country course with her?
“Just once. I’ll walk it again by myself later. It’s good, there are a couple of good questions, it’s a challenge but very rideable.”
Once again, Megan was keeping her instructions simple and to the point:
“Don’t fall off, and jump all the fences! That’s in her language. He’s a galloping jumping machine that horse. He is one of the fastest horses I’ve seen. He gallops like a galloping Warmblood, not like a Thoroughbred – he’s beautiful – he covers the ground and makes time on tracks where you can’t make time, and without ever looking fast. He jumps well, sometimes too well, Abby did her first three star, a CNC***, and got jumped off goinginto the water.”
“He did Reynella before he did Adelaide, and that was a really tough track, it had some really good open apexes, a real Wayne Copping track, curved, skinnies on mounds, and he cantered over it, and came third. I feel really confident about her on this Camperdown track, she just has to get every line right… but he is nice to ride cross country, he looks nice to ride, I’d hop on.”
“He did the four-star prep with my guys, when we went to the beach to gallop them, it was too hard to separate them, so he did the four-star prep, and he loved it. He’s probably fitter than my horses.”
Above photo by Peter Orr
Abby is full of admiration for her horse after the cross-country run – they came in clear with the second fastest time of the day:
“As per usual, he was amazing. He is such a cross-country machine, he looks after me so well. He knows his job and he goes out there and gets it done every time.”
Scary – first to go?
“Not really. I had a plan and I stuck to it. It is always nice to have people go first and know if there is any trouble on the track but I have faith in him, I trust him.”
The water was difficult?
“I probably didn’t ride it as well as I could have, but he is honest, and he did the job again.”
Was there anywhere the plan came unstuck?
“Not really… and he pulled up as good as gold.”
Megan is happy too:
“Very satisfied. She was fast enough and not too fast, brought him home sound. They had a really good rhythm, jumped the fences well, they both looked really confident. She was worried about the brush to the apex on the hill but she rode that really well, it was the one fence I was hoping she would really nail it, and she did. It was a really good round.”
And is she going to go clear in the showjumping, no last fence down…
“Not like me!” (Megan missed out on an individual medal at Beijing when she had the last fence down.)
Well Abby did have one rail down but she finished in second place – behind Aussie star, Sonja Johnson and her newcomer, Belfast Mojito… not bad for your first three-star three day.
