Andrew Nicholson Reflects…

Rebecca Ashton interviews a modern great… and took the photos

When I arrive at top Kiwi eventer Andrew Nicholson’s Wiltshire property, one of the horses is out racing around the field having the time of its life. Grooms are busy getting on with their jobs, as if like clockwork, pushing straw around and fluffing it up into big beds, moving horses on and off the walker while Andrew’s wife Wiggy is readying a horse for the dressage arena. Andrew is way off in the distance popping a grey over some jumps in the field. It’s all business as usual…including the fact that we have to have the interview done by 12:00 as the tight schedule means it will be time to take a lorry full of horses to do some gallop work and then there are four horses that have to be at Blenheim for the trot up at 08:00 in the morning. So you can imagine how grateful I am for Andrew to take time out of his frantic day to chat to me. The day might be busy, but Andrew is as calm as a a zen monk.

Another win at Badminton in 2017, this time with Nereo. Nereo, Quimbo, and Jet Set are bred by Spanish event horse breeders, Ramon & Ana Beca: http://www.horsemagazine.com/thm/2015/01/andrew-nicholson-and-the-horses-of-the-asociacion-national-de-criadores-del-caballo-de-deporte-espanol-cde/

Despite the massive highs (Olympic medals and a win at Badminton this year), Andrew has also experienced some substantial lows too, culminating in break down with Team NZ which saw him miss a trip to Rio last year as well as a serious fall a couple of years back where he narrowly avoided paralysis.

You’re obviously a very determined person, but that’s a pretty big emotional roller coaster you’ve been on over the last few years. How do you cope with that?

You get the knocks at the early stage of your career. You get more knocks than good days and I’ve always been able to pick myself up and carry on and it’s pretty much the same now. You’ve got to make the most of the very good times when you’ve got them because you know there’s going to be some very bad times and there’s always more bad times than good.

Competing at the Kentucky Rolex event back in 2001 with Mallards Treat

I’ve always been self-motivated. I came to England when I was 18 and I didn’t have lessons because I couldn’t afford them. I worked at racing stables and rode horses at lunch time. I’ve always learnt to make do with things. As I got more competition horses, I didn’t need someone to tell me to work that one hard, I wanted to get the results and I didn’t have very good horses. You took whatever you were given to ride and made the most of it. I’ve always been very happy to keep trying to make them better and sell them and keep moving up the ladder a bit. You have to be determined to make it work.

Do you think your upbringing has something to do with it? Ok, so maybe I’m biased, but I think Kiwis and Aussies are a bit like that anyway.

I think it is quite a bit of the upbringing and the way of life when you’re young. When I think back now, to leave New Zealand with a five-year-old horse that had never evented, and coming over to be an event rider, that’s gaga isn’t it? I mean all the money I had went into the flight for the horse and I knew I had a job at a racing stable and they had a place for my horse and a place for me, but I wasn’t banking on them to pay VAT and import duty when I arrived at the airport. Luckily the trainer I went to work for paid it…and kept taking it off my wages months on end. But that’s sort of the upbringing, isn’t it? I didn’t even know where England was at the time!

I think now if one of my children at 18 said they were off to the other side of the world with a horse…

Rebecca caught up with Andrew training at home with Byrnesgrove First Diamond, a nine year old three star eventer. Irish bred by Carrick Diamond out of a Thoroughbred mare.

Why eventing?

I’d seen a movie about the World Games in Lexington in the village hall, they had an evening where someone had a film of it and just seeing the American riders and the English riders and then I happened to meet this English racing trainer from Kent. He was in New Zealand buying racehorses and he had his backer who was financing it, his main owner Stanley Powell, and they’d come to look at some of my brother’s potential event horses who were chuck outs from racing. They were chatting away and they asked me what I wanted to do and I told them I wanted to be an event rider. So he suggested I go to England and he’d give me a job and two weeks later I was on a plane with the horses. That’s how fast it was.

I hated England. I left New Zealand at the end of January, probably the hardest time of the year. I arrived in Gatwick Airport and it was sleeting. It was freezing cold and then going into a racing stable and riding out in the mornings when your toes are cold, your hands are cold; I absolutely hated it; hated the weather, hated everything. I was homesick, I couldn’t wait to sell the horse, but I had to event the horse to sell it. It got to Intermediate level in five or six events and sold him to a Dutch rider. Then it was October and I was on a plane and this Stanley Powell said to me, “You’ll go back to New Zealand for a few weeks and you’ll want to come back.”

I said, no way, but sure enough, I got back to New Zealand and in a few weeks had forgotten how cold it was in England. I kept doing that for a couple of years, travelling back and forward, then I stayed through a whole winter here in ’83 while I was breaking in race horses and I learnt to cope with the cold a bit more. I was here permanently by ’85.

Badminton this year would have to be the highlight?

For sure, especially considering the circumstances and whatnot. It was the first event I went to when I came to England. I asked Toddy if he needed a groom. He comes from the same place as me in New Zealand. He said I could come up for the week, so I met him up there, and he went on to win it. I thought every event in England was like Badminton, with all those people and it was very easy, you just turn up with your horse and win it just like Mark had done. A hundred years later I find out it’s not so easy.

Nereo at the Normandy WEG, Andrew rides for New Zealand

35, 36 goes at it?

It’s a long time. There were a lot more goes than what they say. The ones I add up are only the times I finished. There’s a lot I didn’t finish and I’m too embarrassed to tell you how many of those there are!

I think I read somewhere you said it took you 10 years to sort out your mistakes.

 I still haven’t sorted my mistakes out. Can you ever sort all your mistakes out?

I was going to ask you, was there anything that was always reoccurring? When you’re as good as you are, does it finally just come down to luck at the end?

You make your own luck, don’t you? You make mistakes when you’re young and naive for being a little bit too ambitious. But then that comes back again when you’re experienced and successful, and you’re wanting to win it, not just wanting to make the numbers up, and you start pushing the boundaries a little too far. So yes, those things keep occurring. You can either stay in the steady lane when you’re very experienced, and get a place, or you can pull out into the fast lane now and again and have a chance of winning, except when you do that, mistakes can happen.

What was your self talk in the start box this time?

The last few minutes, I run through the course in my head. Some people might think I’m a little crazy because I’m pointing and prodding the air with my finger, counting out the jumps, talking through their approaches, and how I’m going to tackle them, counting strides. The starter is telling you – you have one minute – and people might be watching thinking you’re doing something weird, but in my mind I’m just quickly going through tactics, visualising.

What would be your advice for riders new to Badminton?

Self belief. You have to really believe in yourself. I’ve never had lots of lessons. Purely because in the beginning, I didn’t have the money to pay for them besides, I always think I’d be a very difficult pupil, even now. You have to be confident in what you’re doing, even if you’re doing it wrong, if you’re confident, you can change it. You’re better off to be doing it wrong but positively, and then you know if something’s not working – I’ll try this other thing. I’ve gone through my career trying to copy other riders, watch other riders in the dressage, in the showjumping, the whole works.

I know to try to replicate is probably impossible, but you try to pick up different things. I think copy-learning is how I learn best. I see the younger riders now and they’re lost without their trainers. At the end of the day, when you walk into the start box, you’re on your own. When you go into the dressage arena, you’re on your own.

Nowadays you even see the trainer take the earpiece off them as they head over to the dressage arena and at the show jumping warmup to send them into the ring. And the coach has been counting strides for them at the practice fence. That’s like having a little kiddy with the bicycle training wheels on it and taking the training wheels off and saying now go onto the motorway and see how you get on. But that’s the modern world, isn’t it?

But that then brings me to another question…in countries like Australia and New Zealand there’s always the talk that one of the things that hinders us, is that we’re so far away from the action. Could you not turn that into a positive? Maybe it’s a good thing that we have to work things out on our own a bit more.

I think New Zealand is getting as bad as the rest of the world. The best investment I’ve had are the mirrors down the end of the arena. But even they, after a while, become a bit of a crouch. When I have pupils come to work, at the beginning I try to get them to look in the mirror quite a bit, but after a while, you have to tell them to stop because they become addicted to the mirror. They’re trotting around looking at the mirror and they’re trotting, then halt and they’re looking in the mirror, the halt isn’t square and they give the horse a boot whereas if they were looking straight ahead and sitting straight into the halt, and feeling if it was square, and then looking in the mirror, it would have been good, so they create the problem a bit.

So what makes a good student?

 Someone who really tries.

What are you like as a coach?

I don’t coach a lot, but I’ve always had working pupils. Some of them have gone on to win gold medals. I think they learn more about life in general and making a living out of horses here. The majority of the ones who have carried on make a living out of being event riders, and that’s hard to do. They don’t come from wealthy backgrounds.

Even Jonty Evans, he worked for me for two years and I told him to go off on his own. He wasn’t confident to do it, but I told him at least you’ll find out and then if you can’t make a living, you go and be the accountant your father wants you to be. I feel very proud of them when I see them out there. They may not be winning everything that’s going, but they’re surviving and they’re doing something they’re passionate about, which in life, now that I’m a bit older, I appreciate. I’m lucky to be able to get up in the mornings and have a job I absolutely love doing, whereas a lot of people get up in the mornings and fight with the traffic to go to an office that they don’t really want to go to. Whereas I have no problem getting up in the morning and riding all day long.

So you still love it?

 Yep. I don’t go to ride a horse to go for a ride in the woods. There’s acres of bluebell forests right here next to us. I never go in there….not even when the bluebells are out! And it’s beautiful.

So it’s the work you love? Is that what got you back in the saddle after your big accident a couple of years back? I understand there was something like a 98% chance you could have been paralysed? You could have retired, walked away and become and coach and everyone would still think you were the best thing ever.

Nereo, perhaps he’ll be back next season

I had Nereo and Avebury and a bunch of other ones going pretty well. It’s also in your head that you’re not happy with how you rode the last one. I just felt that I should be able to do it all. It was quite easy to wait though. I couldn’t do some things for three months, and another for four months and something else for five months and after six months I was told everything should be stronger and I could start off. It wasn’t as if I was in a hurry. I accepted it all and when I started riding again it felt the same as normal, although I had a few issues with balance and what not.

But it’s very tough for my wife and family. Very, very tough. Most people wouldn’t realise. A lot of people think that I just chipped a bone in my neck or something and it just had to heal. It wasn’t quite like that. I’m probably very selfish to be riding actually.

But then aren’t you an inspiration to your kids that you’re doing what you love?

That’s what I think. I can do it still. You can quite easily have your number pop up doing other things, can’t you? That’s the excuse I use, anyway, but I’m not sure it goes down well!

Has the training of your horses or yourself changed since then or over the years?

My training of the horses has changed quite a bit since my accident. Before I would work horses for half an hour on the flat whereas with all the work I had to do myself to get everything working again, I appreciated why you do only so many replicate movements, then have a short break and big breath. Before then, my body could work quite happily as a machine, and I expected my horses to work like machines. I think that has altered quite a lot. Now I’d perhaps work them a little harder while they’re working but they keep getting little breaks. They might do 10 minutes then walk for one minute. It sounds simple but I never used to do that, because I had a lot of horses, but really what’s two minutes walking out of 20? It’s nothing really, is it?

Do you still do exercises yourself?

 No not now, but I was strict after the accident. I’m not overly clever so I thought everything was fine. I came out of hospital five days after the surgery. I was up walking about straight after surgery and I thought everything was fine. Then the surgeon said to Wiggy that it was very important that I got a neurophysio as soon as possible.

She got one who had worked with a lot of soldiers. She went all over me to find where I had feeling. I thought I had feeling everywhere, but it turned out I didn’t have feeling in my fingers, I was using my eyes. She was very strict, so she made me take a jar of rice and in it put a 50p coin, a 10p coin, a stamp, a little bit of newspaper. Then I had to grab hold of it and say what it was then pull it out of the jar and the 50p coin would turn out to be the bit of paper.

It was the nerves. The mind tells the hand the feeling and it will register it. The vertebrae that smashed was the one where the nerves for the arms and hands come out. (Andrew then shows me his slightly turned out hand, the restrictions he still has as well as the improvements made with the small motor skills he’s worked so hard at.) I used to see people who had had paralysis trying to walk, and you think, why don’t you just take a step? It was the same with me trying to lift my fingers up. I then appreciated the problems they have. The exercises have allowed me to get the movement back, if not fully.

I used to overdo it though. The physio would say, do five reps to tell the mind how to work the hand. So, I’d do 100 and then two hours later, the nerves in my shoulders and arms, it was like poking hot needles in me. They’d go ballistic. She’d come back a few days later and say, “I’ve told you five, four times a day! You aggravate them and they go in the wrong direction.”

I had no idea that the nerves and muscles worked quite like that and that’s what made me rethink my work with the horses.

What would your advice be to your 20-year-old self?

I think you’ve got to find things out for yourself. People can give you advice and point you in the right direction, but at the same time, you have to suck things and see, don’t you? It’s no good taking all the advice everyone dishes out, because you’d be totally confused and you wouldn’t get anywhere. I think the advice is that I would get rid of bad horses much quicker. Now I bin them very quickly. I used to think I was losing money doing that, but now I think I’m saving money because you’re not feeding it the next day. That I think has been the main thing…to not think that you can turn every one of them into a champion because the hours you spend on it never really are worth it.

What do you look for then when they come to you as three year olds?

You get a feeling very, very quick. Just to look at them, they might not be the most handsome looking thing, but there’s something about them. The head is the most important bit because that’s the first thing you see every morning. The body you can change with the work. The conformation, they don’t have to be perfect…if everything looks like it matches up. When you start to ride them, it’s the same, you start to get a feeling very quickly, whether you think they’re athletic.

Best horse?

Nereo and Andrew at the WEG in 2014

Nereo. Just to do what he’s done year after year. (Nereo is now 17)

But that’s good management too surely?

Yeah but he’s tough. He’s one hardy, tough person. He comes from a tough family. He’s got a full brother called Armada and another called Fenicio that went to the World Games when he was nine and another called Oplitas that Giovanni Uggolotti rode at Badminton. They are a strong family but he’s very special. He’s come out of Burghley well, and he looks good so you never know about next season, but also he’ll have a few months off now and you never quite know after the winter, they can sometimes age a lot. But he likes being worked, he’s into that system. He’ll probably come in in the middle of December, and if we decide he doesn’t event anymore he’ll still be kept working because that’s the system he’s in. The way we work horses today, we pretty much humanise them, don’t we? They get fed at a certain time, they get worked at a certain time.

Andrew and Quimbo at Pau in 2013

Who have you been most inspired by?

Mohammad Ali. I used to just love listening to him talk before his fights. In his early days, he used to be on the radio and I used to listen to his fight and his chat beforehand, and the way he used to be able to back it up in the ring was unbelievable. I said this to a journalist once before, when I competed with Nereo at the World Games in Kentucky in 2010, in the men’s toilets, they had lots of little sayings and I found those were very, very helpful. There were three lines of the sayings on the wall, things like, “It’s not what you do today, it’s what you’ve done all the days before.” Those sorts of things. I did think of nicking them…I could have picked the three of them up and carried them out, but no, I refrained.

Is the whole Team NZ debacle still hanging over you?

I’ve gotten used to not being involved in the World Games and Olympics, that’s quite easy to accept, not doing that.

So you’re not after that Olympic individual? You’ve made peace with that now?

Yeah

I guess Badminton probably did a lot of healing?

 Even before that, I think the way my federation has treated me hasn’t gone down that well with me.

Would you ever “switch sides”? Team GB?

 I was tempted. Not for an Olympic Games, but then I thought, a lot of the English riders I’ve known all my career have all been very good to me even if I don’t get on well with them. They’re very genuine and I just thought if I then changed, it doesn’t matter if I say I don’t want to take a spot at the Olympics, it does sound like you do.

So you’re happy to keep going, doing what you’re doing?

Yeah. If someone comes up to me and says you look like a real monkey…

Who would you listen to?

 Anyone who came up and told me.

Anyone? No you wouldn’t.

I would. I’d be impressed that they came up to me and said it! There’s a couple of the riders, and I’ve said to them, if I start looking like that one over there, let me know. They look at me and say, you’ve got to be joking.

It would seem your daughter Lily might be following in your footsteps?

 She’s very, very determined. She’s only 12 but she’s looking good and she’s hopped on and ridden the likes of Jet Set, Nereo, Quanza at home here and she can look very tidy on them.

Andrew and Jet Set at the World Young Horse Eventing Championships

That’s gutsy!

 Or naive. But that’s a big step up from a pony, but they are very polite horses. They’re used to the grooms. The grooms ride them in the woods and I don’t watch. I don’t go in there with them, it’s the horses’ downtime. They can go in there and walk or trot with their heads up in the air if they want. They’re allowed to. It’s amazing how quick the horses learn, and how gentle they are with the grooms who aren’t such experienced riders. The young horses don’t do it, just the ones when they get to about intermediate level. It’s good when I watch them walk out and head down the lane and I see one that I might be a little bit nervy about putting a certain groom on it and three strides of it walking you see it just take a deep breath, ok, be gentle. It’s the same with the children if they go and pat them in the stable with their head over the door. The horses are very gentle. It’s only when you intimidate them that they stand and become aggressive. The young ones for sure can be naughty, but the older ones….

Is that good training or just horses?

I think it’s animals in general really. Dogs, whatever. But Nereo, if I walk in to the stable, he’ll stand to attention. He’s ready. The groom can walk in and he’s like a donkey. I take hold of him and he’s ready to go. I ride them. I don’t go and cuddle them and give them polos. I respect them. They learn very quick that you do a serious job and that one over there feeds me and pampers me.

Is it important to have the distinction between the two people so to speak?

I think it is. But you see riders who just have one horse and they’re successful with it, but it is pretty much then the horse is in control, but then the rider is sometimes in control. But it’s a partnership and that works as well. But they normally don’t get another one, do they? They normally just have the one and you can’t replace it, whereas I find it very easy to find the next horse because I’m used to making them.

And there’s that self belief. But it’s belief founded on hard work, self analysis and a lot of experience. Andrew Nicholson shows what is possible when you put the effort in and are honest with yourself. May we see him flying around those four-star courses for many more years to come.

 

Andrew and Nereo, on their way to their 2017 Badminton triumph…