(Photo – eventingphoto.com)

with Christopher Hector

What kind of a magician is Christopher Bartle? He goes to Germany and immediately leads their eventing team to a string of gold medals, returns to his native Britain last year, and leads the British team to glory. I recently caught up with him to get his WEG de-brief:

Now that the dust has settled, or in the case of  Tryon, the mud dried out, what are your lasting impressions of the WEG?
“I guess I was in a little bubble around my own team and eventing – I realise that there were a lot of negatives on the periphery, but in terms of our own little bubble, we were pretty happy. Happy with the facilities for the horses, the competition arenas, the cross country course itself, the conditions. We were pleasantly surprised that on the cross country day the weather was pretty good to us. All in all, especially given the end result, I can’t complain really.”

Everyone seems full of praise for Mark’s course…
“We’d have to be, he produced a really good, interesting competition. If I am really honest, on my first inspection of the course, I thought it lacked a little bit of variety, in terms of the questions – in terms of some of the options, it was what I call a 50:50 call… so I was proven wrong as the day wore on, and I could see there were a lot of what I would call, hidden questions in there. I take my hat off to him for doing that in a way that produced good competition with minimal injury or risk to horse and rider.”

Victory at the Euros – FEI photo/Jon Stroud Media

What was the magic formula that your brought home to the UK after your stint in Germany? You lose a couple of the stalwarts of British eventing, like William Fox-Pitt and Mary King, take a team of relative unknowns, you go to the Europeans, come to the WEG, and blow the rest of the world away…
Christopher is chuckling: “I don’t know about blowing the rest of the world away but clearly coming with a clean sheet, no baggage, looking at the British scene and the potential there, that was one of the incentives to take up the opportunity with Yogi Breisner’s retirement, to put my head on the block and say I was keen to do it. I could see the potential was there. I still think that William Fox-Pitt is a potentially strong player, and he is keen to be in it, so that is great to see. On the other hand when you have some younger talent there, and talent which is very open to being influenced, that is a great opportunity. I was able to put across my ideas on the technical aspects of riding, but also there’s the mental side of it. My strong feeling was, the talent was there and they had to believe in themselves and enjoy winning, enjoy having a crack at winning, even if, when you do that, you always run the risk of failing. Don’t be afraid of failure, just enjoy trying to win, that’s my motto.”

 Victory at the Worlds… Ros CANTER (ALLSTAR B), Piggy FRENCH (QUARRYCREST
ECHO), Gemma TATTERSALL (ARCTIC SOUL) & Tom MCEWEN (TOLEDO DE KERSER)
 (Photo Eric Knoll)

You told me once that when you came to Germany, your immediate task was to put into place your rules for cross country riding, what were the areas you had to address when you came to your new rôle in Britain?
“The British have always been thought of as natural cross country riders, and what they needed to do was get their dressage better, improve their cross country skills. If we look back over the past two or three championships, and I can only say this as an outsider looking in, I felt that it was perhaps that aspect that was disappointing in terms of results. I could see that the dressage side of things had improved substantially and in the end it is won or lost on the cross country. So from my point of view, I was able to transport my rules for cross country riding to a new audience, who were very open to it.”

Ros Canter cleans up at the WEG on Allstar B (Photo Eric Knoll)

 Tell me a little about this woman who suddenly appears and wins a gold medal for you…
“Ros Canter I’ve known for quite a few years now, not as long as Nicola Wilson for example, but it’s three or four years since I took over. She is knee high to a grasshopper, small girl, big horse. She generally rides quite big horses, and what I was able to do with her, and she took it on 110%, was to teach her that she could be as effective, and as strong and as competitive on those big horses, as a William Fox-Pitt, with his advantages of height, length of limb, and obviously, strength to a certain extent. She took it on board 110%, from a mental side of things, she is so focused, so interested in the details, and I think I’ve told you before, these are the qualities of a champion, and she’s got them in spades.”

Focussed – Ros Canter (Photo Eric Knoll)

 I know the Australian team was very much looking at Tryon with an eye to Tokyo and the three person team with no discard, and the greatly increased importance of completing the course – were you in a similar position?
“It was written down in our selection policy that the first priority is qualification for Tokyo, however, secondary to that, the other goal was to achieve as many medals as possible. I felt the squad we took there, and eventually the team that we selected, were first of all, well capable of achieving qualification, based on their performances, and were also in a very good position to go for the individual medals. I would say our policy from the beginning was… attack is the wrong word, but positivity rather than defending, our position.”

But do you think you are going to have to look for different horses and different riders for Tokyo, where the emphasis on getting home safely is that much greater?
“There are two points relevant to that. One is, as much as one can be, confidence in 100% soundness, and the other is confidence in performance, so clearly those are going to be very important elements to the selection process, no doubt about that, but I don’t think that affected the squad we took and the team we chose for Tryon this time. Having said that, there is no doubt we took horses that we had as much confidence as one can have, in terms of soundness and performance. It is perhaps an advantage that we currently have, which makes the selectors job difficult but our position easier, and that is, we have quite a strength and depth to select from.”

Sir Humphrey Applebee talked about ‘brave decision Minister’ – was it a brave decision to leave the world number one out of your Tryon squad?
“I’m really a great admirer of Ollie Townend, and the fact that he is number one in the world rankings is no fluke. He is an ultimate competitor, currently has the horse power, and he was able to get some great results in the Spring – but as you well know, you can only ride one horse at a championship, and the selectors had to make a choice about which combinations would have the best chance, potentially the best results, in the conditions we expected to meet in Tryon. I’ve often said to people who’ve asked me this question before, when you go to the Melbourne Cup, you look at the form and you put your money on a horse and a combination, but they may not be the horse ridden by the champion jockey, it may be another one that you feel at that moment, in those conditions, suits the occasion the best.”

It wasn’t a disciplinary move?
“Absolutely not. No.”

Having cleaned up at the Euros, and the Worlds, what do you do now Christopher?
He’s chuckling again… “Good question. I’ve got two more competitions, Lion de Angers, and Pau. I’m looking forward to those two events. I’m looking forward to some down time after that, and then we start again. Every year, every championship, brings for me, new excitement, new challenge, when I lose that I shall be slightly lost, so long may it last.”

Have you had a look at what you are going to find in Tokyo?
“Not yet, I’ve heard the rumours…”

I went there just before Tryon, and the eventing dressage and the showjumping are where the old stadium was, to the west of the city, and the cross country course is way away on a sort of island in the middle of the harbour on the eastern side of central Tokyo…
“I understand it’s quite a journey to get from one venue to the next.”

I don’t know if they are planning to do that the night before the cross country, or cross country morning, it is going to be a logistical nightmare, and not a single horse has ever set foot on that bit of land and there is nothing resembling a course there…
“There are going to be interesting challenges, you might say, but that is to a certain extent, what makes the Olympics special, exciting, interesting. There’s one team, and one individual, that are not going to complain about the conditions!”

Photo – Rebecca Ashton