Blyth Tait and the Olympic gold medallist, Ready Teddy (Photo – Roslyn Neave)
We pay tribute to one of the greatest eventing riders of all time – Blyth Tait. Blyth has retired from eventing for a second time at the age of 58, but this time he says there will be no comeback (He first retired after the 2004 Games but returned to the sport in 2011). Blyth announced his decision at the New Zealand Horse of the Year show, where he had been competing in the showjumping classes.
“The likelihood of me competing again overseas is unlikely,” Blyth said. “I’m very happy to hand over the reins to the younger ones coming through and I support them fully. There is a bright future and still some serious young talent out there.”
Blyth and his World Champion, Messiah (Photo Jan Gyllensten)
Blyth first amazed the world of eventing when as a relative novice in the sport he won the individual World Championship at the 1990 WEG on Messiah, and was a member of the gold medal Kiwi team. Blyth also took out the individual gold medal at the 1996 with Ready Teddy at Atlanta, where there were two separate events, the team competition, won by Australia, with Blyth a member of the bronze medal winning New Zealand team riding Chesterfield, and the individual event that he won with Ready Teddy.
He was a member of the silver medal winning team at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics on Messiah, also taking individual bronze. He won Burghley Horse Trials twice – in 1998 with Chesterfield, and in 2001 on Ready Teddy.
Burghley winnner – Chesterfield – competing in the Kiwi Team at Atlanta
(Photo – Jan Gyllensten)
“I’m not really one to reflect much on what’s been, I like to keep moving forward,” Blyth told Horse & Hound. “I’ve met some of the most fantastic people in the sport, and travelled to some of the most amazing places to compete, all born out of an original love of horses and the excitement of competition. To have been successful for so long, I can look back with satisfaction. But it does take an enormous amount of hard work and 110% commitment, and now that I’m older it’s hard to sustain.”
Back in 1996, Sporthorse International in association with J. A. Allen, published Eventing Down Under, written by Bernadette Faurie and Christopher Hector. The following extract is from that publication…
Here is Blyth on training the Eventer….
With horses, like everything, I think it is very Important to be susceptible to change and new ideas. I am changing my selection process considerably. First, and foremost, athleticism and ability to jump are prerequisites. That is a philosophy I have always followed. But I have made mistakes in the past because I have gone to the extreme and have excluded trainability and temperament.
For example, I have had some very, very talented jumping horses that have never had a cross-country or showjumping penalty and have just not been world class because I haven’t been able to establish them sufficiently on the flat.
I still look for the same things but I am a lot fussier.
Temperament is important, a horse should be able to relax and let itself be ridden. lt should also have the desire to please; you can’t force a horse to conform to your ways if it does not want to do so. So, we want an athletic, quick moving, quick thinking horse that shows a good natural jump and has a bright outlook and trainable temperament.
These things don’t always show themselves immediately in a young horse; it can take a while and, of course, we can always improve horses. I have had to re-school horses, or get rid of problems, because a lot of my horses have been ex-racehorses. They are not only naive and don’t know what they are doing, but also have a preconceived idea of what they are supposed to be doing! My resources have never been that good.
I have never paid big money for horses in the past and what I have been able to get, has often come from the track. I think that background is a problem, I would rather have one that hasn’t raced, or at least not much, so it doesn’t have problems that need fixing to start with.
Messiah by that good Thoroughbred sire of eventers, Aberlou
Soundness is now extremely important. Conformation tends to influence soundness over the long term so I tend to shy away from conformation defects, although I don’t necessarily go for something that looks perfect. lt is no good having a ‘show horse’ if it hasn’t got the talent or temperament. A lot of my horses have funny little quirks which, as long as they are not going to interfere with their soundness, aren’t a problem.
If the horse can move well, it is a big plus because nowadays, as opposed to fifteen or twenty years ago when a fast cross-country round could bring you up into contention; without a solid and efficient dressage test that is going to have you up amongst the leaders, you might place consistently or might be a good team member, but you’re not going to win.
Attention has to be paid to movement and ability to be trained on the flat, but not to the exclusion of anything else. There is nothing more depressing than having a great mover on the flat that doesn’t have the heart across country or isn’t careful showjumping. You have to find the right balance and I do find that the horses that have the big floaty movement aren’t the careful showjumpers.
In training, I think it is really, really important to train a horse on a consistent theme throughout the three phases. I don’t think you can change the rules between them. You can’t ride the horse on cross-country day from the leg into a controlling hand, then go into showjumping and ride the opposite way where you sit up, sit back and protect the horse from the fences by holding him or riding in a backward fashion. I also think the way they travel on the cross-country and the showjumping courses is going to be a reflection of the way they are schooled on the flat.
Another Thoroughbred star, Ready Teddy by Brilliant Invader (Photo – Roslyn Neave)
I try to keep a consistent thread running all the way through. If there is one thing I am guilty of, it is that I let my horses be too natural. I prefer them to think for themselves. They might bobalong on the cross-country with their noses out a little bit but their ears are pricked and their eyes looking forward. I’m not going to insist that they remain in a round outline! I think it is very important to ride the horses lightly and simply so that they are going from leg to hand. I ride with a very light seat. I don’t like to be a dominant rider and I don’t like to ride deep in the saddle when I am jumping, because I think it stops the forwardness and the softness.
I’m only a little person anyway, so I don’t think I can rely on brute strength, and therefore I tend to try to influence the horse rather than dominating it. The consistency is very important. You can’t ride a young horse one way one day, then think ‘this isn’t working’ and make a change. Horses don’t reason well; they are creatures of habit, a better way is to develop and refine a theme, otherwise they get confused.
I met my fellow New Zealander, Fiona Craig when she asked me to ride her horse, Private Benjamin, and then she started to be my trainer on the flat seriously. What I like about her approach is that she appreciates where I am going with my horses. If I was a green young rider I probably wouldn’t have the experience to understand how she was helping me. We are both quite firm in our ideas and we can discuss it a lot, whereas I can imagine if she was teaching someone much less experienced, she wouldn’t want the feedback that I give her!
Fiona understands my need for the horse to go the way I want across country and when showjumping. She is very clear and very confident in her teaching, and her basics are very basic. lt is round, forward and light and that’s what I want. Get that, and the party tricks come easily.
She does work them a lot deeper than how we want them to be when they go in the ring but it is similar to when I am showjumping, the horses are made more athletic through gridwork and gymnastics.
I am beginning to understand much more but to me, dressage is the difficult phase, there is no doubt about that. I am much more confident about training and riding over jumps. I like to think I am getting better on the flat. Because I am a very competitive person by nature, arena craft is not a problem but in training over the last few years dressage has become more rewarding. l never looked at dressage as ‘the evil of the three’, because right from the beginning, I realised its importance to getting off to good start. Before, I always had horses that were difficult on the flat like Messiah and Delta, who took me some time to figure out. Now I have horses more suited to it. Probably, if I come upon those early horses now, I would reject them, but more fool me!
The reason it was so confusing to start with was that I had difficult horses and didn’t appreciate it. I thought all horses were like that. Now I have had experience of horses which are easier in their attitudes, and the penny is beginning to drop.
Lucinda Green was my great inspiration when I was still in New Zealand, coming up on the eventing circuit and wanting to come to England. She was my hero at that stage. She was really professional, and was, and still is a great ambassador for the sport. I have learned a lot from a lot of people. Ginny Elliott is, I think, wonderful in the production of her horses and her attitude to training young horses.
Andrew Nicholson and Nereo – love the no nonsense approach
(Photo Kenneth Braddick)
I have enormous respect for Mark Todd and Andrew Nicholson for different reasons. Andrew for his no-nonsense-deal-with-the-things-that-are-important-and-forget-the-rest approach and Mark for his sheer relaxed, natural feel and softness in the way he rides. Vaughn Jeffries is smart. He is a very good rider and he’s clever enough to get the right help in areas where he needs it; he doesn’t leave stones unturned.
Vaughn Jeffries and Bounce
Vaughn is a law unto himself in life and I admire him for that. He does things his own way and that’s fine. If we could pinpoint any specific reasons for the Kiwi success, we could turn other people into good riders as well. But, having said that, there are a few things that must be contributing factors: the lifestyles in Australia and New Zealand are the sort that encourage people to have a go: they are both very outdoor, sporting nations. In New Zealand, in proportion to the small population, we are successful at many things, although not perhaps in depth because we don’t· have the numbers. In yachting, golf, rugby, and all sorts of things, New Zealanders have been successful in the world scene.
Back in 2000, at the Sydney Olympics, Mark Todd supported his fellow team member Blyth, by urging the crowd to be silent for Ready Teddy’s test! Don’t think it would happen today…
Mark Todd – natural feel and softness
And now Blyth tells the story of his equestrian career in his own words…
My mother doesn’t know how to put on a headcollar although she enjoys the horses and supports me. Dad is in real estate but has a training licence. Through my teens, I was helping Dad with the horses so when l left school, we expanded and, at one stage, had six or seven horses racing.
I was riding all the track work as well as doing the stable work and mucking out. We had a particularly successful period when we had three mares that were all open handicap standard; we had one Group winner and the others were Stakes winners.
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lt was a lucrative business but then, of course, I wanted to develop my own equestrian pursuits more and set up on my own . I started a pre-training business and Dad’s racehorse involvement tapered off a bit. He is still President of a Racing Club and still breeds horses and sells them at the yearling sales, but after l left he had to employ staff and still had the business to run. He has a couple racing again now because he has slowed down with his business and has more time to enjoy it. He has never been a public trainer, it was always a hobby.
I showed a pony with my two sisters from the age of ten onwards. Then I got a pony of my own, and my next sister up, Sandy, and I joined the Pony Club and we did all the local shows and gymkhanas.
I think right from a very early age I was competitive. I went into showjumping first of all because it was much more accessible, much more ‘happening’ in New Zealand. Eventing was still a very young sport, it was prior to Mark Todd winning his first Olympic gold, so I went into showjumping and enjoyed it.
The first pony – Flash
You don’t get a lot of international experience in New Zealand although I rode at top national level. I would like to go back to jumping a little bit. Our first pony was called Flash but it was not very flash. She was a little Welsh Mountain pony who was very good and taught me a lot.
My first really good pony was Mandara who was outstanding. She was nothing to look at, but was a great jumper and gave me enormous confidence because she was only 13.2 hh but went like a horse. She taught me how to really ride before I went onto horses.I think my father, being very astute in the selection of horses, never bought me ponies I would be over-horsed on, therefore I didn’t know that you could get frightened.
When I went cross-country my only concern was to kick like hell to get to the other side, but I didn’t have to worry about getting run away with or anything like that. I think that was a great help in my development because I don’t have the fears that perhaps some other people who had a bad experience in their formative years have.
I got Mandara when I was twelve. We did the Pony Club Championships and some junior jumping as she was Grade A. I got my first horse, Barbarossa, when I was fourteen. I was still competing Mandara while I started to re-train Barbarossa who came off the track. By thetime I was sixteen he had been competing at novice competitions so we were ready to go straight through. He went to Grade A, won a Volvo World Cup qualifier and the Grand Prix at the Royal Show a couple of times. By the time I was eighteen I was jumping at pretty much top level for New Zealand.
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Dad knows nothing about the technical side of riding, but he is very wise. One of his favourite sayings is: ‘You don’t have to be an All Black to recognise a forward pass’, so he was very free with his criticism. He and Mum were very good and drove us all over the place to shows, they knew I had to get experience. Mum and Dad were quite instrumental in setting up clinics with visiting instructors, not just for me but for all the kids.
When l left home and set up my own place doing pre-training I had to work very hard at it, which curtailed my opportunities to compete and travel with the jumpers.
Then I was offered the ride on Rata to try to make the eventing team for the 1986 World Championships in Gawler, where, for the first time, it was feasible for New Zealand to compete with a team. I took the ride and he was duly selected and we went to the World Championships where he died of a heart attack on the eve of the competition, so that was disappointing.
I’d had my appetite whetted for the sport. At the same time as Gawler I had obtained the ride on Messiah as a showjumper. He had reached Grade B and he was a very quick, onward going horse. He was a very good showjumper and probably still would be, but he found the short distances and tall verticals worrying as he would speed up over them, rather than backing off. I said to his owner, Carole Byles, that I thought he might make an event horse, so we evented him.
He had started showjumping as a real youngster, I think he was five, and he was seven when I took him on. He went straight through to Advanced in one season because of his experience showjumping. As far as cross-country went, apart from being a little bit headstrong and a little bit head high, he was as athletic as a cat. He never fell, and you couldn’t have tipped him up; he had a fifth leg and scope to burn.
Blyth and Messiah (Photo – Roslyn Neave)
To start with, he was terrified of water. He had to be schooled and schooled and schooled but by the time he’d finished, he was fine. For example, at Barcelona, he went the direct way through both waters. lt is something I keep telling young riders that if they have a horse which might be a bit ditchy or a bit water shy, with patience, repetition and perseverance you can teach them to trust you. Messiah trusted me, but it took a long time.
He was bred to showjump. He is by the Thoroughbred, Abalou, the same sire as my Advanced mare, Delta, although she was out of a mare that had some common blood. Abalou was a very well known sire for a while, unfortunately it was late in his life but he left not only those two, but also several other useful event horses and some very good showjumpers. He was a true blue New Zealand Thoroughbred. He didn’t really leave any racers, he was used more on sport horses.
In New Zealand Messiah won his last two star event before I brought him over to England in 1989 to gain experience before the 1990 World Games. His first outing was Chantilly CIC (international one-day event) where he was second out of a big field.
I had experienced Gawler at first hand but I had never been to Badminton or Burghley. I thought competition at that level was really exciting, it was something I could do. When we decided to pursue an event career with Messiah we realised he was way better than average.
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I wanted to compete at the World Games, but I didn’t just want to come over and finish twenty fifth, I wanted to be in the running. I realised I would have to come over twelve months before to gain experience, so I made the big commitment, I sold everything I had, lock, stock and barrel, to finance it all. I was genuinely only coming over for the twelve months until the World Championships.
Once I was World Champion, everything changed. I wanted to pursue a career in eventing and decided I would stay in England.
When I first came over, I went to Bill Noble’s place. He was the only contact I had. Bill had been training us for Gawler and had married Felicity who was a friend of mine. They made it possible for me to be based there, but pursuing an eventing career out of a dressage yard didn’t work out, so I moved just down the road.
Bill was instrumental in a lot of my early training and ideas and he was absolutely perfect for Messiah. Bill understood his Thoroughbred brain and was a great help with that horse.
At the end of 1989, we went to our first three-day event in Europe, Messiah was second again.
While I didn’t come over as a complete greeny, initially I had to find my feet and I do think that having that early success was great for me, because I believed that I could do it.
Messiah was a horse with the ability to win because he could do a very flashy test, he was fast across country and he was clean showjumping. If I rode him well, he should have been up there with the winners.
He also won a couple of one-day events in that first year. Our confidence grew and grew, because in the spring of the following year, we went to Badminton and he was second again.
I thought, I am so close, if I can beat them once I can beat them again!
Winning at Stockholm – Blyth and Messiah (Photo – Werner Ernst)
I think I was incredibly naive going into the 1990 World Championships but I genuinely believed I could win. I sound like an upstart, but I didn’t go around saying that, I quietly thought, if I do my best job and get close enough after the dressage, the horse is fast enough across country and talented enough, both cross-country and showjumping.
Although I know now with so much more experience that anything can go wrong – the horse can go lame, you can fall off – because everything had been so perfect in my preparation, I was just inwardly confident.
I think that in competition, mental attitude is a great part of the equation that leads to success. If you know that your training has been bad or you know you’ve lost three weeks of fitness work and maybe have to be a bit careful or a little lucky to peak at the right time, if you don’t believe in yourself, nine times out of ten you lose.
You do well when you get there totally confident in your preparation even though you know there are going to be ten other people thinking the same.
Success in Atlanta (Photo – Bob Langrish)
lt was a big key to Ready Teddy’s success in Atlanta, or certainly to his cross-country performance.
The same thing happened when I was at the World Championships in 1990, the mental attitude was good. lt wasn’t at The Hague; I wasn’t happy with my preparation at the end.
In Barcelona it was a different kind of mental attitude. Everything went wrong and I felt completely floored after the dressage but I had to keep the team in mind because if I had just come home clear with an average time after a really bad dressage I would hardly have been an asset. The only way for me to be of help to the team was to go for it,so I did. I think it is the way everyone should do it.
Messiah was a very aloof horse, not affectionate but very intelligent. Sometimes training dressage I used to think ‘you’re thick because you will not submit’, but he was very quick-wilted, quick-thinking, quick-reacting and quick moving.
If I had him now, I don’t think I would be anything like as successful because I would try to dominate him.
When he was my only horse, or one of my few horses, I had the time to put into him. For example, he had to be lunged when he got to a one-day event and have a preparatory warm up. You had to ride him, get off him and pretend that we’d done the dressage test, get on him again and work him long and low for twenty minutes – it was a rigmarole to prepare him for a test; he always did a better three-day test (with the exception of Barcelona).
If I had him now I would get hold of him and say ‘come on, don’t be ridiculous, try to concentrate’ and probably wouldn’t have achieved the same result. We were a combination of one horse one rider when I first came here, but I used to get really frustrated and, again, Bill Noble was fantastic.
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Before that first Badminton, I would go to dressage competitions and do three or four tests hors concours just to ride him through various problems. He was a horse that took a lot of time to produce his best but then again, he never let me down across country or showjumping, ever.
In 1989 I had all my eggs in one basket and realised that if something went wrong, all my money, time and effort would be wasted as I wouldn’t get to the World Championships anyway. I had a bunch of novices in New Zealand which I planned to go back to and produce to sell on, but I sold them all and bought Ricochet, selling a half share to an English couple, Ginny and Peter Vaughan. We campaigned him as a back-up horse. He had upgraded to, but never competed at, Advanced when I bought him from Mary Hamilton (now Derby).
He was a lovely horse and had the nicest attitude to life. He was a real gentleman and he tried his heart out. He was lacking in some areas: he didn’t perhaps have the athleticism of Messiah, he was an ex-racehorse and he was capable of a very good test on the flat, but did not always do his best, he would get tense and jog in the walk. He was excellent for me as he was only the second horse I had ridden at that level and he made me realise I could make it on more than one.
He placed fifth at Burghley in 1990 when he also won the Scottish Open. He had a leg injury in 1991 so missed a bit of that year and in 1992 he won Punchestown. He went to Barcelona very much as an understudy to Messiah who had more experience at that level. Ricochet was a horse that missed his opportunity to show himself, because he was always the understudy.
He ended up second at Badminton the following year and was really past his best, so we retired him.
Ricochet was a great workman and still one ofthe nicest horses around the stables I have ever had. He is now with a New Zealand girl who is married to an Englishman and he is enjoying the ‘life of Reilly’. She loves him dearly. She hacks him, has dressage lessons on him and competes him at riding club level. He thinks he’s died and gone to heaven! lt is ideal for him as he was not the sort of horse that would have thrived on being thrown out in the paddock. He was not a loose, soft horse anyway but now he is about nineteen and still going strong.
Messiah is back in New Zealand. Carole hunts him and he is still as mad as ever and enjoying life. He is a good hunter. He doesn’t get strong or silly, he is just enthusiastic about everything and as long as you are prepared to go with him, he thinks it is great fun.
After winning the World Championship I made the decision to stay in Britain, for the next four year period, the next Olympics and then to defend my title at The Hague. I had Ricochet, then Delta found her way to me to be sold.
Blyth and Delta at Badminton in 1994 (Photo Bob Langrish)
Jo Shepherd, who owned her and had brought her over from New Zealand, had not had the best of deals while she was here. The horse had hurt her leg and when Jo could not afford to stay on, her loss was my gain.
I wish that Jo had had the success she deserved and I sincerely hope she does in the future because she is a great rider and a real trier. When Delta came to me I liked her, she is a fantastic jumper and very, very good across country, so I asked Jo if it would be possible for me to put together a syndicate, in which she could remain a shareholder, to buy Delta much much cheaper than she would have been on the open market. Jo agreed, so we got five people together, formed a syndicate and kept her.
I hoped that Messiah would go to The Hague: he didn’t. Basically I should have retired him immediately after Barcelona, he had given his all and iust didn’t work as well. He was even more difficult on the flat.
By then I had Delta as my anchor for the World Championships – she was a fantastic mare that wasn’t right on the day. I think she suffered from cramp, she was in season when she got out there and the heat didn’t suit her in that situation. She was a mare after all.
A fortnight afterwards she won the Scottish Championships and was retired after that.
The Hague was just one of those things that didn’t happen, but that is what horse sport is all about. Delta was also second at Badminton and Burghley and was another great string to my bow. I have never had a huge string but generally have about half a dozen on the go, including some novices that I have produced and sold, or horses I have ridden for other people.
My enthusiasm for the sport started flagging a bit after The Hague and I did want to go home. But I thought about what I could do back home in New Zealand. The answer was that I didn’t know.
All the horses I had at top level were retired so I had to start afresh and get young horses. That was a challenge. Aspyring really started it off again as well as a talented mare, Just a Cracker. She hasn’t had the opportunities because of a lot of niggling things: colds, leg injuries, and it has been difficult for her. We haven’t seen the best of her yet, hopefully.
Aspyring won Bramham and Boekelo and looked as if he could be a real prospect for Atlanta. Then he broke a pedal bone in a hind foot at Brigstock and was off for twelve months, so that was another set-back and it was all iust getting a bit much.
Blyth and Chesterfield (Photo Roslyn Neave)
However, by that stage I had acquired Chesterfield, who came to me under tragic circumstances after his promising young rider Melissa Bradley was killed in a car accident. He has gone from strength to strength . He had to step in and go to the European Championships last year where he finished seventh and showed he was a horse with a future. He was fifth at Badminton before being in the bronze medal team and I think he put up a very good performance in Atlanta. I was really pleased with him. Chesterfield is a very nice ‘person’. He reminds me a lot of Ricochet in that he is not l 00% conventional and that he tries hard, so that makes up for his physical shortcomings.
For example, he hates the cold and comes out of his stable very pottery. He is not a muscularly loose horse. He thrived in Atlanta because it was hot. Preparation through January to March in England is miserable for him, he hates it. At the first few one-day events, his coat was on end and he didn’t move in his tests. He is not a great mover anyway but he always tries. He jumps a little flat, but he is careful and he is only ten . He has done the Olympics, the Europeans and Badminton and if I look after him I think he is a prospect for Sydney. He has a lot of good performances in him so I won’t over-use him in the next couple of years but try to ensure that Aspyring and Ready Teddy share the load a bit.
At one point I stayed in Dauntsey at the same yard as Matt Ryan. He had the front ten boxes, I had the back ten, but we only had a tiny cottage and a little school. In order to expand I needed better facilities. When I got sponsorship from Toggi in 1992 we moved to Sandy Pflueger’s yard in Berkshire where we stayed for two years but it was difficult to maintain that level of expense. I don’t regret basing at Sandy’s. The facilities are second to none and I think that enabled me to produce more horses to Olympic level, but I had to win every competition I went to in order to pay the rent!
Then a friend was winding down her operation and the opportunity came up to move in with her in Gloucestershire. I was looking for more independence; my new base has a more homely, throw-the-horse-out-in-the-paddock-when-it-suits-you kind of atmosphere, more like the Kiwi style.
The future for me at this moment is to carry on. I have Ted at eight, Chess at ten and Boz (Aspyring) at eleven. I can see them being the nucleus of a good eventing team for three or four years and I have some encouraging youngsters.
I don’t want to get in the situation of having hundreds of horses around me and riding ten horses at an event or going to events because I have to. I have been going flat out, driving and struggling to event andthat is going to remain my primary focus. If I can continue to be sponsored – Toggi have been a huge support over the past four years and without them I wouldn’t have been able to operate – that would be great.
The sponsorship came about through a friend, Alysha Collins, whose horse Puritan, I rode at Windsor. When I won the World Championship I thought sponsorship would be easy to find. lt was not. The economic climate at the time and the fact that it is an expensive sport to be involved in, didn’t help, butI was getting pretty desperate. Alysha had a sponsor and I wondered if they might be interested in a two rider deal. They weren’t, but Alysha suggested Iget in contact with Phillip Billington, the Chairman of Chemring Group. I met him with my portfolio in my hand and he said he was starting anew outdoor clothingcompany and might want me to do some pre-product marketing.I took it, it snowballed and now they are high profile. I think I have been of use to them as a marketing vehicle and I have certainly got a lot out of them. lt has been a happy partnership.
I have sold the occasional horse to earn some money, we all have to do it. The idea is to buy a horse cheaply and use our experience and know-how to make it rideable for someone who might not want to go to the Olympics, but I don’t do a lot of buying and selling, as I don’t want too many horses around. The New Zealand Sports Foundation has started to realise the potential in us as team-medal prospects and they have given us transport allowances, training grants, and so on. We have to beg, steal and borrow the rest. I teach, write an article here and a book there.I would like to consider getting into business later, but one thing, an indulgence that I would like to pursue, is to try and redevelop my showjumping, play around and see if I can’tprogress. I’d like to get a tried and tested old schoolmaster showjumper in the next three or four years. Vaughn Jefferisand I were great friends back in New · Zealand (although I haven’t seen much of him over here because we are all off doing our different things), we evented together and showjumped together before that. I used to hang around with Vaughn, and another rider, Trudy Boyce, and itwas funny because we usedto laugh and joke saying ‘let’s all win the world championship’. Vaughn won it, I won it and Trudy was the silver medallist in Gawler so it was incredible thatbecause we had that attitude of ‘let’s do it’ rather than watch the others do it, we did it.
Gold at Atlanta (Photo Jan Gyllensten)
Ready Teddy – The Kiwi Thoroughbred takes on the world… (Photo Roslyn Neave)
I think we have a very good raw product in our horses, when we all started, we were successful on New Zealand horses. Of course as we have developed contacts wehave acquired others such as English bred horses, but we still have a large proportion of New Zealand horses in our teams and in our stables. Anybody who gets up and goes to the other side of the world has the drive, the focus and the determination to do well. I do think if the hub of international eventing was in the southern hemisphere and if people from England had to go down there, make the commitment, deal with the expense, then they too would probably be sufficiently hungry to be determined to do well.
I think also that the New Zealanders and Australians have started the right way; they have had a raw, natural way of going but they have also been open-minded and very susceptible to training and education.
When I wasin New Zealand there used to be a waiting list to go on an Ian Stark, Ginny Elliott or Mark Phillips clinic and there were lots of disappointed people and this is from a very, very small population.
If I, a past World Champion and Olympic gold medallist, have a clinic in England now, it doesn’t even fill, and that is from a much larger pool of people.
I think that shows that we were hungry for success but also that we were hungry for information and open-minded . Wehad an advantage in that we came to the sport after a lot of nations had been doing it a long time, so we gained from their experience and developed quickly rather than having to learn it all for ourselves. On the other hand, we were able to introduce our own ideas on the maintenance of horses and the natural way of producing them.
We have a great facility in New Zealand as far as the terrain and climate goes. I don’t know if it is going to be a trend but with the leading notions appearing to be Australia, New Zealand and America, I think that people have to be ready to absorb newideas and to change. Anyone who is set in their ways (and that goes for any sport nowadays) will just get overtaken by those people with the new ideas, new methods and more developed ways.
Certainly the Kiwis have all had top level showjumping experience.I think showjumping is the key tocross-country riding. If you learn about balance, rhythm and control you’re going to go better across country.
If you go hunting you’re going to learn about stickability and balance but you are not going to learn about riding a horse on a short three strides to an arrowhead or anything like that. There are several ways of arriving at a result, but unless you are going to develop a more technical attitude to producing and training horses you are going to get left behind. That is why New Zealand and the United States, who don’t have a hunting background, have gone way past the others.
Countries who have let us catch up are in danger of being overtaken unless they become more modern and actually think about having lessons with George Morris, or people like him who have been an influence on the New Zealanders, the Australians and the Americans. I still change my ideas and watch a lot to see why people are being successful. I am always glued to what Mark, Andrew, Vaughn, the O’Connors from America, and some of the British riders are doing. I can also learn what not to do or what would not work for me, by watching people.
(photo Jan Gyllensten)
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