ISSUE 74
JAN 2022
AMANDA ROSS
A LEAP OF FAITH
DRESSAGE BACK
WITH A BANG
BIG PLANS FOR
THE SCHRAMMS

PLUS: HEATH RYAN'S HOPES FOR YOUNG TALENT, KERRY MACK ON BITS, TEAM WILLINGA PARK, MAKING THE CUT AT DIAMOND B, NICOLE SLATER’S HORSE ART, CALLING ALL COWHANDS, IRISH WOMEN TO THE RESCUE, HYDRATION & ELECTROLYTES; & HORSES IN THE MOVIES.

AUSTRALIA`S BEST EQUINE MAGAZINE
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ISSUE 74

CONTENTS

JAN 2022
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A Few Words

FROM THE CHAIRMAN

ROBERT MCKAY

Ryan's Rave

TIME TO DEFINE PATHWAY FORWARD

BY HEATH RYAN

Dressage

TEAM WP’S INTERSTATE RAID

BY ROGER FITZHARDINGE

Showjumping

AMANDA’S BIG LEAP INTO SHOWJUMPING

BY ADELE SEVERS

Eventing

DOM & JIMMIE TAKE IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL

BY AMANDA YOUNG

Dressage

COMPETITION BACK WITH A BANG

BY DANA KRAUSE

Special feature

IRISH WOMEN RIDE TO THE RESCUE

BY ADELE SEVERS

Showjumping

GRAND PRIX: MAKING THE CUT AT DIAMOND B

BY ROGER FITZHARDINGE

Lifestyle

NICOLE SLATER LIKES TO THINK BIG

BY MICHELLE TERLATO

Health

DON’T FORGET THE WATER

BY DR MAXINE BRAIN

Training

MAKING SENSE OF ALL THE BITS & PIECES

BY DR KERRY MACK

Health

ELECTROLYTES: GETTING OUT WHAT YOU PUT IN

BY ELLIE JOLLEY

Lifestyle

‘TROY’– BIGGER THAN ‘BEN HUR’!

BY SUZY JARRATT

EQ Journeys

SO, YOU WANT TO BE A COWHAND?

INTERVIEW BY PHOEBE OLIVER / WRITTEN BY EQ LIFE
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Amanda Ross and RLE Poynstown Will, aka Vendi, have switched from eventing to jumping World Cup courses. © Michelle Terlato Photography.
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For close to three decades, Olympian Amanda Ross carved a hugely successful career out of the sport of eventing. Through circumstance, she’s recently made the switch to showjumping – and she’s now addicted to her new discipline of choice.

“No one cares if your flying changes are late. You only need one saddle. You don’t need to plait, except for the big classes. And there’s no galloping up a hill every Thursday rain, hail or shine,” says long-time eventer turned showjumper Amanda Ross.

Amanda had been an avid eventer since her Pony Club days. By her late teens, she was training in the UK, and returning home at age 20 she purchased the horse that would ultimately take her to the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games seven years later – Otto Schumaker. For the next 20 years, Amanda devoted her life to eventing with much success, being named reserve for three World Equestrian Games.

Now the 48-year-old has taken on a new challenge: showjumping. “I really feel that I need to do something that gives me a challenge as a rider, something that I look forward to every day… I’ve found my new passion!” she declares.

Amanda explains that it wasn’t a conscious decision to switch disciplines, but rather a change that came about organically through circumstance. Following her Tokyo selection campaign, two of her top eventers – Koko Popping Candy (Zarzy) and Dicavalli Diesel (Diesel) – were retired from competition. “I ended up buying both from owners Fraser and Chrissy Brown – Diesel for $1,” she explains. “With Zarzy, we put her in foal as she has been a very good and well performing mare, while Diesel is semi-retired and I practise dressage on him… I love him, he’s my heart horse and he still thinks he’s going to Paris. No one’s told him he’s not!

“Another of my eventers, whom I half-owned, Dondiablo (Lewis), was getting a little older. He didn’t owe me anything; he had done incredibly well. I thought it was time that he taught somebody else and brought another rider up the ranks. He’s gone to a fantastic young rider, and he’s showjumping,” says Amanda.

That left the two newer horses to the stable, Irish imports RLE Poynstown Will (Vendi) and RLE Cavalier Vivendi (Hughie). “I felt Hughie was always going to be a top-level eventer, as cross country is his thing. He’s been sold to a wonderful girl who’s hoping to head overseas next year.”

A NEW ADRENALINE RUSH

Amanda credits Vendi with being the horse who triggered her showjumping change. “As an eventer, he always struggled a bit with the dressage. I found that he wasn’t the happiest horse when I had to push him on the flat all the time. At the beginning of 2020, when we were gearing up for Tokyo, I didn’t think he would perform a dressage test that was going to get me on the Games team.” So rather than strive for a goal that didn’t suit the horse, Amanda took Vendi showjumping to see if that’s what he preferred and whether it made him a happier horse. It was a raging success, and a year later in March 2021, Amanda jumped her first World Cup with him at Werribee, placing tenth.

“I gave him the opportunity to be a much happier horse within himself; he’s given me the opportunity to jump some really big fences. I feel like, rightly or wrongly, that I’ve ridden at all the eventing competitions in Australia. I do feel that for me right now, I’m excited to go showjumping rather than doing the same thing every day and attending the same events with the same people. It’s not like the UK where as an eventer you’ve got a big selection of events and you can aim your horse at exactly what works, and if you can’t get there one weekend, then there’ll be another one to reroute them to; there’s every opportunity to get the horses peaking at the right time [for major championships] over there. My aim has always been to go to an Olympics or World Championships, and it’s such a small opportunity to go… I don’t have the money to go buying ready-made eventers to refill the barn again, so I thought, ‘What is it that makes me really happy as a rider?’”

Amanda has been coached in the jumping arena by Brook Dobbin for a number of years, initially when she was still eventing. She says his tuition has helped her develop as a showjumper and transition over from eventing to straight showjumping. A top-level competitor as well as a coach, Brook is now often riding in classes alongside Amanda – and she says having his expertise on hand at events has been invaluable.

When asked if she’d ever go back to eventing if the right horse came along, Amanda says she’d never rule it out – but at the moment she’s simply loving the challenge that showjumping presents. “I love the challenge; there’s so much to learn and I love doing the big classes. I’m really enjoying doing the Grand Prix classes and I’d like to do the World Cup circuit.”

While Amanda is no longer galloping around eventing courses, she says there’s no lack of adrenaline in the showjumping arena. “I tell you, my heart rate at the side of the ring before I rode the World Cup, I reckon it was as high as it was before I did a cross country track,” she laughs. “I absolutely love jumping fences the same height as my head! It is a huge adrenaline rush – I must admit, the fences look much better when you’re on the horse compared to walking the course!”

Amanda is also enjoying the change of pace in terms of preparing for competitions – one saddle instead of three and less plaiting for starters. “I think that coming from an eventing background, there is less regimented work in the showjumping, so that in a way is refreshing.”

DIFFERENT MANAGEMENT

Amanda explains that while eventers showjump, there are key differences when it comes to training and managing a straight showjumper versus an eventer.

“When they’re not doing all that long fitness work required for elite eventing, they certainly hold their weight better. Vendi has almost gone up a rug size, he’s really built up. He just has more strength about him rather than stripping it back to a leaner, endurance type of muscle. [My horses now] actually get less feed, because they’re not burning as much energy.”

When it comes to managing soundness, Amanda explains there are differences between eventers and showjumpers – although the fundamental aspects remain the same. “The eventers have more bumps and scratches, and they get a bit more jarred up. Whereas I think for showjumpers it’s more about just maintaining suppleness and that strength off the ground. They are certainly jumping a big height and have to be super elastic, so getting them really supple through their back and making sure they are elastic enough to be jumping that big, that’s probably the key difference.”

Regardless of the discipline, Amanda still believes in two key management protocols: icing after any decent workout and a good joint supplement. As an eventer Amanda was always big on icing her horses post-work – and it’s a practice she’s continuing. “I still ice them after every decent jumping training session, and after each class at a competition, to prolong their soundness and try and reduce any inflammation that might be there.

“I also put all of my top performing horses, or any horse I think is potentially going to be a high performing horse, on joint supplements.” Amanda explains that she’s a long-term user of 4CYTETM and recently became a proud ambassador.

“It is super easy to administer because it’s a daily thing and they literally will eat it with their feed or straight out of the syringe, they love it. I love it because it’s non-invasive; you’re not having to worry about doing injections. It’s non-swabbable, which I think is really important. If I’m not there, somebody else can easily administer it and I’m not having to worry about any problems resulting from it getting into someone else’s feed. The other reason I’ve gone with 4CYTETM is because it has great research behind it. It’s important that the product you use has integrity.

“Good joint care is really important because our horses are such incredible athletes, and they’re using themselves regularly and at quite a high intensity. We want to maintain them. It takes many years to train them to get to high level, and I think we need to preserve them as much as we can.” Amanda also has her beloved dog, Ringo, on the canine version of 4CYTETM for his elbow arthritis.

After many years in the saddle, Amanda is careful to maintain her own soundness. Physical fitness and general health have always been high priorities, and she also uses OSTEO-restoreTM – the human version of 4CYTETM. “I find it’s a really good product, I’ve got a pretty dodgy hip; it’s got multiple issues going on, so anything I can do to maintain some sort of integrity in there is an absolute must!”

“A base level of fitness

is really important.”

CREATING A SHAPE

When it comes to training showjumpers compared to eventers, Amanda explains that one of the key differences is the fact that showjumpers only have to focus on the one discipline. “Their bodies are not being pulled and stretched in different directions. In a sense, that is easier, because you can pick a horse for its specific job and don’t have to ask them to overreach in any area where they might be lacking.”

Amanda notes that showjumpers don’t have quite the same demands as eventers in terms of fitness training. “Showjumpers definitely need a more explosive energy than eventers; eventing is obviously just a lot more of an endurance test, plus they’ve got to be so well schooled to manage all the flatwork requirements. I actually had found that because of Covid, and the wet weather on the Mornington Peninsula over spring and early summer, I hadn’t been able to take them out and do all the fitness work I wanted to do – but I am going to increase that. Showjumping events often run for four days and horses usually have to jump for three of them, so while they might not need to be ‘eventing fit’, a base level of fitness is really important so that they do retain that explosive jump by the final day.”

In terms of actually training horses over jumps, Amanda recalls lessons learned from the great Nelson Pessoa. “As an eventer, I had some really great training with Nelson Pessoa through the Australian High Performance Team, and one of his thoughts were that you’ve got to create muscle memory in a horse, so it knows how to make a shape. If you train it constantly, so that it’s continuously encouraged to make the correct shape, then that’s what the horse learns.

“The problem with eventing is when you go cross country, that shape gets very distorted and the horse gets strung out, and it’s inconsistent. So with them, it was a lot of getting them back into the right shape after cross country, getting them to shorten to jump up in the air a bit more and not rushing.

“With eventers, you also have to be careful not to make it too hard for them showjumping; if they don’t have a really good technique and they’re not as sharp in front, you can’t ride them as deep to a fence as you might a showjumper. You’ve got to cater a bit more for their capabilities and be fair in what you ask them.

“With showjumping, the horse has to turn up and they’ve got to be super sharp. When you’re training, you allow them to make some mistakes for themselves; if they’re a good showjumper, they should want to get out of the way of the rails. With an eventer, you tend to protect them a little more over show jumps.” Amanda explains that unlike straight showjumpers, you don’t want eventers to be too careful – otherwise you risk them stopping on cross country.

“With the showjumpers I’m also jumping a lot bigger in training, and I’m learning you’ve actually got to go really fast and you’ve got to have a really good eye. So that’s a difference; with eventing there’s no speed round over show jumps – and God bless the eventers, if you did a speed round they’d probably spray rails everywhere! Speed over show jumps isn’t a priority for those horses.” Amanda has been in plenty of jump-offs and ridden the odd speed round class in the showjumping arena (a class that’s against the clock, where rails down add extra seconds to the overall time rather than rail faults), but she says she’s yet to give it a serious crack. Once she is more consolidated at the higher level and feels like she’s earned her “speed ticket”,  watch out – because she can’t wait to see just how fast she can go!

He always looks like
a beautiful horse to ride.”

THE NEXT CHAPTER

Zarzy’s new chapter as a broodmare has seen Amanda re-enter the world of breeding – something she hasn’t done for 15 years. It’s been a learning curve she’s enjoyed, and she looks forward to seeing what is produced. In terms of her stallion choice in Eurostar (Diarado x Chacco-Blue) – a nine-year-old ridden at elite level by fellow Aussie showjumper James Arkins – Amanda says the horse caught her eye on the competition circuit.

“He always looks like a beautiful horse to ride; he’s got a beautiful arched neck, he’s a lovely type and he’s really leggy. I always thought Diarado would suit Zarzy, because he’s such a dual-discipline stallion. His type I thought would really suit her, as I wanted something that would give me possibly an eventer if not a good enough showjumper. Eurostar has got jumping lines, and he also moves well. James had said he’s had a few dressage lessons and he’s very capable. I wanted something with a good temperament as well.”

One of Amanda’s reasons for choosing a domestic stallion was that Zarzy, being a maiden mare at 14, would be more likely to get in-foal with chilled semen. “In the end we actually did frozen… and boom, it worked!” she laughs. Eurostar is currently in the USA with James, preparing for a tilt at 2022 World Championship team selection, and Amanda will be following his progress keenly.

When it comes to competitions this year, Amanda is planning to head to nearby Boneo Park for their World Wetlands Day Jumping Championships this month, followed by the Australian Jumping Championships early February where she’s entered in the senior title class. “I’d then love to do the Australian World Cup tour and really just cut my teeth at that higher level and improve at that level.”

In terms of building a team of horses, Amanda is having great fun with Vendi and hopes to add some more young horses to the team. “I’d love to be producing up-and-coming jumpers that might be my next stars,” she enthuses, noting she’s always on the lookout for potential owners. “I’d really love to get some supporters on board and have a really fun atmosphere. I’d love to be connected with people who love the sport and want to come out with the horse to compete and follow the journey.” And while she’d be thrilled to have young horses to bring on, she’s always open to a proven performer. “If I could fast-track and be jumping bigger fences quicker, that would be amazing as well. A team of three or four horses would be perfect!”

Amanda has dreams of competing on the world stage in her new discipline – just as she did with eventing. “My ultimate goal would be to go on the Longines Global Champions Tour!” she says. Big ambitions – but like the height of the jumps she’s now tackling, the sky’s the limit for Amanda Ross. EQ

This article was written in conjunction with 4CYTETM. You can find out more about their joint supplements here.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE TO READ:

Getting Out & About with Dan SteersEquestrian Life, November, 2021

Lucinda Green’s Joint VentureEquestrian Life, September, 2021

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