Photos courtesy of Tammy Marcinko
I would like to start off by saying a big thank you to everyone involved with the YR U25 program for awarding me a training grant and for making this program happen. I have benefited from this great program both last year and this year and it has allowed me to take advantage of several great learning and competing opportunities that I may not have had access to otherwise. So thank you YR U25 committee and thank you to the awesome sponsors who support this program!
I was fortunate enough to go to Bromont, Quebec for two weeks to help prepare the cross country courses for the Bromont Horse Trials that ran there on October 3rd. The training grant helped to allow me to take my horse Cruze with me to Bromont to have some lessons with Roger Deslauriers. Roger is an all-around horseman with a wealth of knowledge from being a hunter/jumper coach as well as being the general manager of the International Bromont horse show. His son, Mario Deslauriers, has represented Canada at the Olympics and other international competitions and grew up having lessons from his father. I was able to have a number of lessons while there with the focus on show jumping.
During the first lesson the focus was on flatwork and equitation and how that all comes together to influence how you ride to a jump. He had me start by trotting to a vertical with a placing pole and wanted me to work on adding leg at the base of the jump to create power over the jump. Then we moved on to going to jumps on a long approach in order to maintain the quality of canter to each jump. Lastly we jumped a more hunter type of course with set distances with the goal of maintaining the same canter and rhythm throughout the course.
During the second lesson we did some similar exercises to warm up and then Roger had me jump through a line set for 6 strides in 7 even strides. Each time we went through the line he would make the oxer at the end larger, which made it more and more crucial to have 7 even strides because jamming in a last stride would result in us having a rail. This also made it so Cruze really had to use himself over the large oxer instead of relying on speed to get the scope.
During the third lesson we moved into the jumper ring and worked on some new exercises. To start with I was made to jump through a 1 stride of verticals all while maintaining what we had worked on during the first two lessons; the rhythmic but powerful canter all the way through as well as my equitation over the jumps to allow Cruze to use his body. We also jumped a single vertical with “V” rails to encourage Cruze to jump straight and even. This was great for me because it showed how scopey he can be as the jumps got bigger. We also did some course work and had a bit of a learning experience over a solid wall jump.
I was also able to compete in the Training division at Bromont and was able to use my experience from my lessons in competition. I had hoped to compete in the Preliminary division at Will O Wind on October 18th however Cruze was a bit off and so we had to withdraw. I am looking forward to the 2021 season and will continue to build on the knowledge and exercises that I worked on in Bromont.
Thanks,
Jacquie Kelton and Cruze