Jessica Manson & Christine Bates – A teacher and student case study, Part 1

Meet Jessica Manson – the young eventer who has been steadily moving up the ranks. First a spot on the 2010 Young Rider Trans Tasman team, only two years later a fourth place in the 2012 CCI 4 Star in Adelaide, then really making herself known with second place at this year’s Sydney CCI 3 Star event, riding her tough little stockhorse, Legal Star, aka Trumby the Brumby. She finished second to Olympic medalist and local hero, Shane Rose and in front of many other established stars including some trying for places in the WEG team later this year.

Time to learn more about this talented young rider, her horse and her coach – WA meets NSW, or to be more accurate, WA meets WA now settled in New South Wales… THM visited the trio in their preparation for the Melbourne CCI 3 Star event were they were working on Legal Star’s weak link: dressage.

The Student – Jessica Manson

“I am 21, from the Swan Valley in Western Australia. Mum got me into Pony Club from very early on, and that’s where it all started. I did everything, a lot of Prince Phillip Games Mounted Games up to international level, and then when I turned fourteen or fifteen, I decided that eventing was it. I still do a little bit of everything else, but I have been sticking with eventing for a while now and I still love it.”

Who has been helping you along the way?

“I have been working with Sonja Johnson for quite a few years; I had my first lesson with her before my first Pre-Novice. I also worked quite a bit with Wayne Roycroft, Brett Parbery, when I get the chance, and more recently with Christine Bates. I have been over here, with Christine, since the beginning of March. Originally I had planned to stay until Sydney, but I sort of changed my plans and now I am probably going to stay over until the end of the year. I have three horses with me, my Four-Star horse, Legal Star, and then I have two One-Star horses, KP Corrado and Two Chances. It has been good to have the three of them here with me; I have been able to work on them all.”

WA always had lovely horses, but they are always talking of problems with the distance and the competition. Is it that much harder to get there in WA?

“We do have very nice horses, a lot of good riders and very good events. I personally believe it is important to come over here. Obviously the distance is quite a limiting factor, that’s why I like to get a few events in and compete against different people, different judges, different horses and get that bit more exposure than what you get back home. I think our courses at home are definitely up to standard. But there is obviously a lot more competition over here, a lot more people.”

Does your involvement with horses leave you time to do a degree as well?

“I started one… I have got 18 months left of a Bio-Med degree, so at some stage I need to go back and finish that. But I am not sure when… I took an extended gap year. Where I was going to University was well over an hour from home and by the time you factor in all the travel and the time at University, it was quite hard to fit it all in with the horses. I would like to go back to it, finish it at some stage, but in the meantime…”

How ambitious are you? Do you want to get over to Europe and go around Badminton?

“For sure, I think Legal Star is such a good jumper. I would like to take him overseas at some stage. I have got the two young horses, which are looking quite promising, but while I’ve got a consistent good Four-Star horse I would like to take him, but it is a huge expense, which is going to play a big part in it. I will have to plan that somehow for next year or the year after.”

The Teacher – Christine Bates

Originally from Perth, Christine moved to Sydney in 1994. She was a non-traveling reserve for the 2002 WEG and long-listed for two Olympic Games, Atlanta and Sydney. She stopped competing at high level to start a family, however, a trip to the 2008 Olympic Games re-ignited her competitive streak.

“I watched Australia win the silver medal and I have grown up riding with Shane, Clayton, Megan and Sonja and that was the point when I said to myself that I had more to achieve. Although it has been a long hard road back, I feel more focused and balanced than ever before.”

When she is not travelling to competitions, Christine runs Bates Equestrian Australia, a successful breaking–in, training, coaching and agistment business. Days are long juggling family life with a busy competition schedule, training horses and coaching riders such as Jessica, who has been working with Christine since March. Did they know each other before?

Jessica: “No, I didn’t have much to do with Christine until last year. We had quite a big competition in WA, called Eventing in the Park. It was basically an Eventing Grand Prix on our foreshore. I actually lent her one of my One-Star horses to ride. That’s how I got to know her and then we got talking and I thought it would be a good idea to come here and work with her.”

The Horse – Legal Star aka Trumby

Legal Star was born in Albany in WA, Sonja Johnson country.

Jessica: “He is mainly stockhorse, by a stallion called Ringwould Legality. He is not related to Jaguar, Sonja’s horse, but he was bred by the same people. We bought him as a three-year-old and he will be thirteen this year, so I’ve had him for ten years. I’ve had a long partnership with him.”

Jess and Legal Star just picked up 3.2 penalties for time in the cross country at Sydney – that was the second fastest time. Was the horse always a natural in the cross-country?

“He is a pretty reliable cross-country horse, it is probably his best phase and he is very consistent in it. Also that sort of track suited him. He is very brave but careful. And he is quite rideable so that makes it easier to make time on him. And showjumping? He is usually pretty reliable showjumping, but we had a couple down at Adelaide last year. So I have also been working on the showjumping quite a bit with Christine and I was really happy with his round at Sydney, hopefully that’s also going in the right direction.”

Was the dressage always a little difficult?

“It has always been a little difficult. Obviously in the lower grades it hasn’t been quite so influential, but now it is something I am really trying to improve.”

The Breeder  – Jim and Augusta Saunders

Jim and Gussy started breeding horses in 1980. They are best known for breeding the famous Olympic medallist, Ringwould Jaguar. Legal Star is the son of their lesser-known sire Ringwould Legality. But let  Gussy tell the story:

“My sister-in-law, Ann Chadwick bought two grey mares of mixed Eastern states breeding from a neighbour when they were farming at Bremer Bay on the south coast of Western Australia and mated them to her own stallion, an Anglo Arab called Coromandel Astral Star. One of the mares, Snow White produced Comet, a 14.2 hh mare with lovely paces, who was the perfect beginners’ horse. Ann sold her, but later bought her back for breeding. I think she had an earlier foal that went eventing before Ann brought her to our stallion, Ringwould Legality by which she had two foals, Legal Star and Celestial Law.”

“Legality is by Crown Law, Erica Taylor’s successful dressage horse, out of Plutonomy, a Thoroughbred by Plutus (USA) out of Betty May (NZ), which we bought from Margaret Allen in Victoria. Unfortunately he was kicked on the stifle as a two-year-old and never regained his full paces. His competition career was limited by geography and the fact that we were spending all our money supporting Jaguar’s campaign. Therefore I only have two of his progeny.”

Legality 

“Ann gave Legal Star to her daughter-in-law, Jane, who had him broken in by a local Natural Horsemanship exponent. I saw him soon after and was shocked that he tried to bite me when I went to see him in the paddock. He was terribly nervous and reluctant to be handled. I recall how shocked I was at the comparison with the yearlings I had just been handling at home. Jane did very little with him, so Ann sent him to Polly-Ann Huntington for further training, then Jackie Sept rode him for a bit, but couldn’t take him to Perth with her. Beth Slattery bought him for her granddaughter, but they didn’t get on, so he was offered to Jess’ mother, Louise Manson for endurance. Along the way he gained a reputation as a bit of a rogue and an accomplished bucker – he still offers to bite me when we meet. Louise got bucked off quite quickly and was shocked when she came home to find her 12-year-old old daughter had been playing around with this rogue horse.”

“However, Trumby liked Jess, who didn’t offer any threat and was prepared to work in partnership rather than trying to dominate him. Ann says it is a characteristic of that family to resent a rider that likes to dominate them. Jess has had a lot of difficulty in getting the best out of a cranky horse; it is very much to her credit that she has succeeded so well. The important point to get over is that the best horses are not the easiest ones to get along with, and just because you don’t get on with a horse doesn’t mean it’s no good.”

The Dressage

Jess: “It is definitely our missing link at the moment. I am working quite closely with Christine, but we hadn’t worked for very long before Sydney. Between then and Melbourne we are working as hard as we can to improve the dressage. I think a lot of it is the connection, when he gets fired up, and if you lose that at the start it is quite hard to get it back throughout the test. He is also a bit built downhill and quite little, so keeping him connected and uphill as well as forward and relaxed is quite important. One of the problems I have is that Trumby is quite a different ride at home to what I have at competition. I can get quite nice work out of him at home, but repeating it at the event is one of the biggest challenges. So I think between now and Melbourne, I need to try and ride him in as many dressage arenas as possible and repeat the work that I do at home in the ring.That is very important, and to just keep him relaxed, because he can be quite a hot little horse.”

Does that become a mental challenge? There is always that tendency, if you think your horse is going to be hot at the competition, to freeze up and the horse suddenly thinks, ‘oh dear, something bad is about to happen’. Is it really hard to break out of that feeling of prophecy and stay calm, soft and relaxed?

“Yes, that’s definitely a factor when you know that they have got the potential to fire up. But at Sydney he did cope a lot better with the atmosphere than at previous events. So think we are going in the right direction, hopefully we can pull it off at Melbourne.”

What is your goal for Melbourne?

“I would very much like to get sub-50… If I get that, I will be very happy. But we do have quite a bit of work to do.”

The Game Plan

Christine: “Trumby is what he is. He is a small grey horse and not built like a dressage type, he is not uphill. He has three nice paces but he is not extravagant by any means. So where Jess can pick up marks is in riding a very accurate test and not giving marks away. We are basically going through the test that we are doing at Melbourne, movement by movement, and really trying to make everything very correct to go for a very consistent score through the whole test. Jess previously had a few issues with getting him to canter down the centre line and he is quite good now at doing that, but he is also very quick to hit the brakes and halt. The actual halt out of the canter is quite good, but in the 3 Star B test, you have medium walk, halt, rein back and then proceed in collected canter. So we have been working a lot on the halt out of medium walk. He is very good at throwing all his weight onto his front end, he really goes against your hand, which then obviously affects how your rein back is going to be and then affects your canter strike off. We are just doing very basic things to help improve and try to pick up one or two marks in each movement.”

“At Sydney he did a much-improved test as far as rideability and accuracy are concerned, but we are still losing marks, the contact is not consistent. We need to get that score down to a sub-50, preferably a sub-45. As I said, we are not going to miraculously make him trot like a Grand Prix horse, so we have to go about it slightly differently and really work on it being a consistent, flowing, rhythmical test with no mistakes.”

Jess says part of the problem is that he is working quite nicely at home but then he loses it at the event. It’s a problem Christine dealt with before…

“There are lots of horses that work very relaxed and have that rideability at home, but then the atmosphere gets to them and you lose that, you get tension, which then obviously creates nerves in the rider, because they know the horse is not going as well as it can. It becomes a vicious cycle. So what we have been trying to do is put him under more pressure at home, so that when he goes out, he is not feeling the pressure so much. One of the horses I had early on in my career was Masterprint. He was to the point of lazy at home, yet would go out and fire up and become very hot. At that stage Heath Ryan was very involved with the eventers elite program, and that was one the things he taught me, you’ve got to create that pressure and the atmosphere at home, so it’s not such a big deal when you go out.”

So how do you create atmosphere at home?

“Ironically this is probably the quietest Willow Park has been in three months. It’s normally a hive of activity, there are trucks driving in, usually a tractor is driving past and there are lots of things going on here. But being a Monday after a show it is a little quieter. But things like, we have a stereo set up in the indoor arena, we also have unwelcome pigeons that fly across the arena when you are riding, plus there are generally children and Jack Russell dogs running through the arena.”

What can Jess do as a rider?

“I think it is very easy as a rider to get stuck in a position of ‘this feels really good, and very nice and relaxed’, and I always say, well, that’s not how the horse goes at the show, so I’ve got to try and create that. Through our Ultimate Eventing Series we recently purchased a very nice dressage arena, which we actually set up down on the cross-country course. Jess has warmed up on the dressage arena up here and then went down there to do her test, and it’s like riding two different horses. We will keep doing that, creating that tension to be able to then work through it. It’s also having the tools as a rider, to be able to deal with that tension and have techniques, and a plan of how to correct them.”

So what are the techniques that you need as a rider?

“Obviously each rider with each horse will do different things. This horse is quite lazy at home and if anything a little backward, you’ve got to use a lot of leg. We try not to ride him too often in spurs; we use a dressage whip, because he becomes quite dead to the leg. Yet when he goes out, he is hot and tense and Jess feels like she can’t put her leg on. The key is re-enforcing the leg aid and keeping the leg aid very correct. For example she is trotting around and one of the habits Jess has, I even have it myself, we start to kick the horse every stride, as she is doing right now. The idea is you put your leg on, you ask for something, and then leave them alone with your leg. It’s the little things that can make a big difference.”

Did we get a bit obsessed that our eventers had to have exaggerated dressagey trot? You talk to Ingrid Klimke about Butts Abraxxas and she says, ‘that’s a pony, it has no trot, it never had’. And we forget that you can do good tests and get good marks just with accuracy and persistency…

“Absolutely. I think we do sometimes lose focus and think about the paces too much, we try to make them bigger and flasher and yet, really what we are after is a horse that is showing engagement, reach and a good consistent frame. One of the things that I have noticed this year, as we have been lucky enough to work with Gareth Hughes, little things like the upward and downward transitions from collected trot to medium trot, it has to be more subtle and flowing. Gareth was able to assess each horse and rider very quickly, and what he did with one horse might have been completely different with another horse. Each horse was assessed individually about what to do to make that horse go better and how to make that horse score better, and I thought that was really important. We’ve got to have more gears when we are riding our horse, but it has to flow from gear to gear. It shouldn’t be abrupt, but finely tuned and not so obvious that you go ‘oh, it’s over-shortened or over-collected’, it’s got to be within the horse.”

In part two, we will be watching Jess, Christine and Legal Star at their next competition, the Melbourne International Horse Trials in Werribee.