Words by Chris Hector & Photos by Roz Neave, and file

This training session with Chris Burton took place in 2004, before Chris travelled to the UK and commenced his rise to a world class event rider. Now he’s won Olympic and WEG medals, won at Aachen and been on the podium of some the leading UK events, and produced a World Young Horse Eventing Champion. How did he get there?

Christopher Burton is one of our most stylish looking riders, and it is no surprise that he is properly fussy about rider position. Clare has to carry her hands, keep her elbows in, think about her position…

“Keep your thumbs together so you know where your hands are. Your elbows loose and more elastic by your side. Stand in your stirrups, stretch down and think about your lower leg being there all the time. Toes out a little, stretch your heel down, that’s the lower leg I like.”

“Pick up the canter, stay in the saddle, think about your lower leg, now off her back, open her up, and let her travel. We want her easily adjustable before you start jumping.”

“Light hands are nothing to do with the hand on the rein – they come from elastic elbows. Don’t rest your hands on her neck, balance on your lower leg – that’s why we need it in position, the lower leg has to be secure enough to support your body.”

And it was time to ride some circles to get the mare back on her hocks, into trot again, shortening and lengthening the trot: “It is going to require a lot more balance than you’ve got now, to get around this course. You must have her listening to the aids before you start jumping.”

Warm up completed, it was pick a line in the distance and line up to the cross rail and pole. “Pick a distance, either six or seven strides, whatever you want, but make it happen.”

Sure enough a lovely seven strides comes up, but Chris is not happy with the line: “Look to your line earlier and stay straight, and stay straight away from the fence as well as to it. Halt after the fence, and still stay straight and get her to yield. Don’t let her run through the bridle, if you do that you are schooling the wrong thing. Rein means slow down, leg means go forward – so why when we see a wrong distance do we grab for the reins?”

The pole becomes a little vertical: “Try to do the work early then leave her alone. Being clever enough to leave the horse alone is one of the ways we get them to jump. Look at a horse free-schooling, the neck is down, the jump is classical. We want to leave them alone so we get that jump with us on their backs, and again, that is why we need that good lower leg to support us, so we can leave them alone and get that natural jump.”

“If we do the schooling before we get to the first element, then leave them alone, they learn to jump rather than worrying about us. And keep your eyes up – let the horse watch the fence, you insist on the line. As soon as your eyes stay up, your shoulders stay back, and you don’t jump your body forward.”

Chris wanted Clare Watkinson to halt Bug after the fence.

“This is how we’ll school flying changes. If she knows how to yield to the rein – and she is still a bit vague on that one – and you can hold her straight with your leg, the flying change will be no problem.”

“The main thing is to let them learn to watch the fence, then even if you get it wrong, they have a chance.”

It was a good lesson, subtle, nuanced, effective – and best of all, Christopher insists, in the nicest possible way, that his pupil follows his instructions. I think this is more and more the test of an instructor. Almost all of them can mouth the theory, but I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen some fake going ‘Yes, get them nicely round and listening to you’ while the horse runs around the arena like a chook, with the rider swinging off its gob. The good instructors, like Chris, are not afraid to make their pupils work.

I thought that since you have made your name with Deo Juvante as a very fancy dressage rider on the eventing scene, that you would choose a dressage lesson for today?

“Oh yeah, Chris Burton does good tests then… I know him. I am serious about jumping and jumping instruction. Over the years I’ve picked up things from other instructors, and developed my own style. I’ve become fairly passionate about the way I want my horses to go, and the way I want to see horses jump.”

Deo Juvante

Who have been the influences?

“Wayne Roycroft through the squad schools. The horse learns to watch the fence, that way we can miss and get away with it. Obviously we want to ride as well as we can, and we do try as hard as we can, but let’s face it, no-one can ride so well that they never miss, no-one can get a distance to 33 fences every time – hopefully our horse can save us one of those times.”

“I learnt so much from the George Morris clinic, just to have someone like that say, ‘that’s the truth, that’s how it is’ and make it all so very simple. That clinic really did change the way I rode and the way I trained horses. For me, it meant making things easier for the rider by training our horses so that we are not doing all the work.”

Well it was quite some clinic for Chris, here’s what George said about his position, ten years later, in 2015. We were at Aachen and George said, “There’s a picture in your last issue I would like to discuss.” Of course we are always anxious for George’s words of wisdom. Here they are:

I would just like all riders, especially event riders, to look at this impeccable picture of Christopher Burton. Notice the length of stirrup, it’s not too long, it’s not  too short. There is a nice 110/120 degree angle in his knee, look at that leg position – that flexible ankle, his heel is down, the stirrup leather is perpendicular to the ground. It’s an absolutely classical position, his stirrup is at right angles to the girth, as is told in the German Equitation manual, but they don’t tell the teachers. His seat is clear of the saddle, he is not jumping ahead  of the saddle, not dropping back, not doing that hail  the taxi that they like. I’m very critical of the eventers, when necessary to save your balance, you lean back over the top of a fence – but he is so with this horse. Eyes are up and ahead, almost textbook perfect. If he would just lower his hands a few inches, so we don’t see the right hand – but that is acceptable, bracing  with his right hand, turning with his left, but to be textbook perfect, he would lower his hands two or three inches, so both sides of the horse’s neck would be a straight line to the mouth. I don’t know Christopher Burton, but I particularly like his form over a fence.

What did you get out of your first trip to England?

“Actually the best thing for me, as just a young Australian rider, was to go and compete against riders like Pippa Funnell and William Fox-Pitt, at one day events, but still with them on their good horses, and find myself up there with them, even beating them! All of a sudden you say to yourself, they’re human, they’re beatable. They are good riders but they are not doing anything different to anyone else. Sure they are experienced, they are bloody hard to beat… but yeah, they are basically the same, they make mistakes too. I beat Blyth Tait at an Intermediate ODE, and that gave me a lot of confidence.”

You like teaching?

“I love teaching, I get a lot out of it. It is amazing how much you learn yourself out of teaching. The thing about letting the horse watch the fence, came from teaching. When you are teaching young students and they are pulling on the horse’s mouth, and you see the horse looking back at the rider and taking the fence very awkwardly – all of a sudden it changes when you say, leave the horse alone, let it watch the fence.”