Sydney International Thee-Day Event was always going to see a standout performance from the CCI4*L winner. With a 23-strong field and no shortage of talent, it would take something special to come out on top.
Well, that’s exactly what happened. Leading from start to finish and adding just time faults to their dressage score, winners Andrew Barnett and Go Tosca proved that their incredible consistency at FEI level could be replicated at their first long-format four-star (CCI4*L).
“That’s definitely my biggest win,” grins Andrew, who is still on Cloud Nine a few days later. “To get the win and being able to lead from start to finish was pretty amazing. You know, I could get used to it!”
Andrew believes it was finally Go Tosca’s time. “I think he won six or seven three-stars in a row,” he recalls. “When he stepped up to three-star level, he just won. After three starts, I remember someone asking when he was going to go four-star. He didn’t actually do many two-stars, and so I felt he needed to take his time at three-star, so that’s what we did.”
Then of course the pandemic came along, and after that it rained a lot. Go Tosca’s four-star debut was delayed until 2022, but Andrew rolled with the challenges and took it slowly to ensure the horse was well and truly ready when his moment finally arrived. “I’ve been very strategic this year, not running for time and instead setting him up for Sydney. Being so competitive as a person, it hurts a little at times… but the goal was always to go to Sydney and have a really good performance.”
MR RELIABLE
Andrew’s patience paid off, and the pair finished on a score of 29.3, adding just 3.6 cross country time faults and 0.4 show jumping time faults to their leading dressage score of 25.3. Their dressage mark would be seriously competitive at most CCI4*L events in the world – and it wasn’t even a PB. At Willinga Park CCI4*S earlier this year, they scored 23.3!
“He’s just so reliable,” says Andrew of Go Tosca in the dressage arena. “He does the same dressage test every time. At Sydney he felt very comfortable everywhere and really nice and solid, which you want at four-star level. It’s really within his comfort zone and he finds it so effortless now. I make myself go to the arena familiarisation… but he barely needs it. He’s very much the same in big environments or spooky environments. Very rarely does he have a problem.”
At Willinga Park CCI4*S, Andrew and Go Tosca were just 1.5 penalties off the World Championship combination of Shenae Lowings and Bold Venture, with the order reversed at Sydney CCI4*L. “We were very close to Shenae. It’s really good having her back on Australian soil because it gives you a really good benchmark of where you sit compared to someone who’s been over and done CHIO Aachen and the World Championships. It’s really pushed me having her, as well as [eventual Willinga Park CCI4*S winners] Shane Rose and Easy Turn… there are some really good dressage horses in Australian eventing now. Olivia Barton is the same with Henrik APH [second at Sydney CCI4*L]. Doing a 70% [30 penalty] test doesn’t quite cut it now. It has to be mid-70s, and I’d like to think we can get even close to the low 20s… as a group, that would be great!”
Being Go Tosca’s first long-format four-star, Andrew was careful not to get too ahead of himself come cross country day. “He was excellent throughout. We got to the last minute marker and I just cruised him home… in the back of my head I was saying, ‘Don’t do anything stupid, you’ve done all the hard stuff, make sure this happens and get that four-star long ticked off!’”
Heading into the final show jumping phase as the last to jump, Andrew had just over a rail in hand ahead of Olivia Barton and Henrik APH – not that he knew, as warming up he hadn’t heard who’d jump clear and who hadn’t.
“At the end of the day, my aim was to finish as close to my dressage score as possible. A clean round was the main goal. He was really good. I had a good friend of mine, James Mooney, a showjumper, come down to warm me up and that really helped.” So, what was Andrew’s first thought when he crossed the line clear? “Relief! You know… it’s that relief of not letting your horse down. It took a little bit to sink in…. it was quite nice!”
“It was a real team effort…”
TEAM EFFORT
It was an emotional win for Andrew and his family, as getting Go Tosca to Sydney was undoubtedly a team effort. It’s been a tough year for Andrew, who barely rode during the first six months due to injury. “In December last year, I injured my foot. I tried to keep going… I didn’t get to the first event because I’d done a groin injury, and then I didn’t get to Tamworth CCI because I’d injured my foot badly again and had to have surgery. I’d been trying to nurse it through and then I fell off a young horse and was in a heap of pain. I said, ‘Stuff it, it’s time to stop and actually sort all this out.’”
Andrew’s partner Tarsha Hammond – a former top-level eventer herself – kept Tosca in work with help from grooms Katie Murray, Demi Rowlandson and Kaitlyn Funner. “They put in a lot of work,” says Andrew. “It wasn’t just Tosca… there was six or seven weeks there where I wasn’t very mobile, and Tarsha had to ride all my horses as well as hers. It was a real team effort.”
Andrew’s first event back was Tamworth CCN, however he said it wasn’t until he got to Willinga Park CCI that he felt he wasn’t thinking about nursing his own body. “After Willinga I was back to how I would normally feel in the saddle, so that was relieving.”
When it came to getting the CCI4*L result on the board at Sydney, Andrew explains that in the end he had quite a small window to make it happen and get that all-important qualifying result for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“[Sydney CCI4*L] was my last-ditch effort in terms of looking forward. I think we’ve all known what an amazing little horse he is, but until you have that long-format four-star there’s no real conversation much before that. Now that he’s proved himself in a strong CCI4*L field it’s certainly moved him into the limelight, but I’ve still got a lot to prove over the next six months. I hope now that I can keep working towards Paris… while trying to find competitions that I enjoy and thinking about riding well, as opposed to just that end goal.”
At the moment, Andrew is simply enjoying the win before he begins to think seriously about his next move. “I’m going to let it just sink in for a couple of days and start having a few conversations with some other riders around what might be a good program for him. The optimism’s high at the moment!”
FROM SHOW JUMPING TO EVENTING
“I was always very obsessed about horses from very early on,” Andrew explains. “For my 10th birthday all I wanted was to go to Pony Club camp and I’ve just loved horses all the way through. I came from Kempsey on the Mid-North Coast… there wasn’t a lot of high-performance opportunities in the area, and I was probably always a little behind the eight-ball in terms of performance,” he muses.
A turning point in Andrew’s career came when he was at a show with what he describes as his first really amazing horse. “A good friend of mine, Olympian David Cooper, saw me at this show and I said, ‘Is this a good horse?’ He said, ‘Yes, but not if you keep riding it like that!’ He recommended I go and see Jamie Coman,” laughs Andrew.
Following David’s advice, Andrew met with show jumpers Sue and Jamie Coman to see if he could work for them. “I was doing a building apprenticeship at the time, and a really good thing Jamie did was say, ‘You’re not allowed to come and work for me unless you finish that’.
“As soon as I finished the apprenticeship, I went to work for them for two and a half years; it was amazing. They got me going in the sport. I then went to Victoria and worked for Rod Brown as a rider for his young horses for another two and half years. And then finally Tarsha and I moved to the Hunter Valley and set up our own place.” Tarsha was a highly successful eventer when an injury sidelined her, and the owners of her horses didn’t want to send them elsewhere. “Tarsha said, ‘Right, you’re going eventing’,” laughs Andrew. “I was like, ‘Ohh, hang on!’”
These days, Andrew and Go Tosca are leading the field in the dressage – but Andrew says it hasn’t always been that way. “I couldn’t do dressage at all in the beginning. I thought I was good on the flat from the work I’d done show jumping… but it’s very different in terms of riding and winning a dressage test.”
Andrew says that even understanding what sort of horse was needed for the cross country phase was an eye-opener, but fortunately he had Tarsha and her eventing expertise in his corner. “She’ll tell you there were a lot of arguments,” he laughs. “She pulled her hair out a lot! But it made the transition really easy having my own coach and mentor right there.”
Andrew says these days he really enjoys all three phases: “I enjoy the pressure of trying to finish on the dressage score. I think I’m one of the few that went from show jumping to eventing… but I can’t see myself going back the other way. I’m hooked.”
Also on Andrew’s team are Oscar Park Deluge at three-star, Oscar Park Chisholm at two-star, Go Tosca’s full brother, Go Tonic, at one-star, and Go Jemima at EvA95, as well as others that are with him for short-term training.
Coaching is also a big part of Andrew’s day-to-day life. “I can’t fit any more people in… I coach anywhere between 25 and 50 people in a week! Tarsha still coaches and rides, and both our kids have just started competing too, so that’s exciting. I think Tarsha’s starting to get the itch to have a bit of a comeback, so hopefully we’ll see her out soon!”
In October, Andrew was also named as Equestrian Australia’s Performance Pathways Coordinator. With this new role he plans to have fewer horses in work – eventually trimming it back to his core competition team – so that he has more time to focus on the role, which is something he’s really excited about.
SHREK THE STATION STALLION
Andrew owns Go Tosca in conjunction with the gelding’s breeders, Sue and Bill Burnheim, and their daughter Kate. “They’ve just been fantastically supportive and they’re good friends,” says Andrew.
The story of Go Tosca began on the Burnheims’ station west of Dubbo nearly 25 years ago. “Bill bought me a 20-month-old colt for my birthday,” explains Sue of how their breeding journey began. “I think there’s been times when he has rued that decision!”
“It was that jump that
caught Andrew’s eye…”
The colt was bred by Libby Sauer when she had APH Sporthorses and was by the stallion Alberick. Named APH Shrek, he went to one-star level with Sue in the saddle, but had to retire age six due to complications stemming from a paddock injury.
“He just lived in our paddock and was an amazingly good-natured animal. Sometimes my sons would need to move some cattle down where Shrek was… they’d just make a rope halter and ride him bareback around the cattle and move the cattle and let him go again. He was that sort of horse,” Sue recalls of the stallion, who sadly passed away earlier this year aged 25.
“I then got a Thoroughbred mare named Kinky through friends from Sydney, they literally gave me this mare… they had been trying to get her in foal with all these fancy stallions and they had never been able to,” explains Sue. “Long story short, the moment she was dropped off in the paddock with Shrek, they hit it off and 11 months later there was a foal!”
That foal was the imposing bay Equinox, who Kate took through to four-star level. The next foal by Shrek out of Kinky was a mare named Echo. “She would only be probably about 15.3 hands; a little, plain brown mare. Nothing special to look at… but she had a great jump on her,” notes Sue.
It was that jump that caught Andrew’s eye one day when he was out competing. “I saw the mare jumping and was impressed. Later, eventer Emma Mason asked me if I knew of any nice horses, and I said, ‘Actually I saw one yesterday!’” Emma enquired about Echo, however the Burnheims planned to retain and breed from the mare and so she wasn’t for sale.
ALONG CAME TOSCA
As it turns out, it was a lucky turn of fate for Andrew… Echo’s first foal was a little colt named Go Tosca. Initially, Kate Burnheim broke him in and took him to one-star level. Just like his mother Echo had caught Andrew’s eye, so did Tosca. “He was the horse I always wanted. I had my eye on him for a long time. I had to wait until Kate got pregnant, that was the only reason I think I got him!” laughs Andrew.
Sue explains that when Kate fell pregnant, she initially began riding Tosca herself, however she had too many horses to ride already. “We thought he was pretty special, so we gave him to Andrew because he was just going to sit in the paddock otherwise,” says Sue, adding, “We gave him half ownership of the horse when he took over the ride… there was a big drought on at the time and we didn’t really need extra expenses.”
Tosca was six at the time, and Sue says Andrew has taken him along slowly over the past six years. “He has taken him along really steadily and at his own pace, he’s very mindful of all that,” she says.
Andrew also has Tosca’s full brother, Go Tonic. “He’s also talented, but he’s different temperament-wise. He’s really cheeky,” explains Andrew. Sue agrees, noting that Tonic definitely wasn’t for the faint-hearted in the beginning!
Following Tosca and Tonic, there was a colt by Jennifer Wood’s stallion Cocaine Ego Z (aka Leroy), and then two more full brothers to Tosca – a three-year-old and yearling. “I’ll walk out each time she’s had a foal and I’ll say, ‘Oh you’ve had a foal, Echo, you’re such a good girl’. She just has them in the paddock without a worry. We certainly haven’t babied them,” says Sue, adding that Echo is a pretty special mare. It’s a sentiment Sue says Tosca’s sire, APH Rocardo, agrees with: “Carlene Barton [APH Sporthorses] always says Rocardo takes a long time to get the job done. Well, I reckon the longest he has ever taken when he sees Echo is about five minutes!
“Echo’s just about to have another foal. We would really like her to have a filly because she’s had five boys. We’ll just see what happens!” says Sue, who these days is based in Orange with Echo and another mare on the property, while the rest of the horses live with Kate on the station west of Dubbo.
Echo’s mother, Kinky, did have a third foal, however she sadly passed away when that colt was just six weeks old. “At that time Kate was up north on a station and we were up there visiting. One of my sons was at home and he had to go home from football matches every two hours to feed this orphan foal… so we actually gave it to him! He was 17 hands and named Pumba… he’s only ever been a station horse his whole life and gets ridden once a month. He’s just a beautiful natured horse; he was probably wasted in a way but living the life of Riley nonetheless!”
Sue explains that all the horses they breed go mustering. “We like to do as much stockwork with them as possible when they are three and four years old. In fact, anything Kate is riding continues to do stockwork in between competing.”
Tosca is no exception and did his fair share of stockwork prior to partnering with Andrew. “Mustering is great for eventers, because you’re out and about and you’ve got cows, kangaroos and logs all around you. Where Kate lives… she’s out on the Macquarie marshes, and you’ll be going through cumbungi (an invasive introduced weed) which is so high you can’t even see over it… and the next minute a wild pig races out underneath you. It’s fantastic for the horses and it’s a great leveller!”
TOSCA EARNS THE LIQUORICE
Tosca, like all Burnheim-bred horses, has a frog brand on his shoulder. As Andrew explains, its meaning lies in the fable of two frogs in a bowl of milk. “Two frogs fall into a bucket of milk, and they swim around and around, and one frog goes, ‘This is pointless, let’s give up’ and the other frog goes, ‘No, you can’t give up, you gotta keep swimming’. The first frog gives up and drowns, but the other frog just keeps going around and around until he turns that milk into butter and climbs out. It was the motto of the Burnheims, and it’s been very fitting over the last 12 months!”
The last 12 months might have been tough, but the Sydney CCI4*L win has brought the year to a positive conclusion and now both the Barnetts and Burnheims are excited to see where the future takes them with their special horse. “Andrew’s done a fantastic job. We are so lucky to have had the relationship with him and that’s been an absolute blessing for us. We will see what the future brings,” says Sue.
Everyone agrees that Tosca is not just talented, but simply a lovely horse to have around. “If he was a person, he would be a nice person,” says Sue. Andrew agrees: “He’s not your typical high-level horse in terms of his personality. He’s really quiet… all the kids can be around him. He’s one of those horses that if he gets loose from the truck he’ll go and put himself back in the yard. He doesn’t do much wrong. The only time we’ve seen him really come alive is cross country; the rest of the time he is this quiet, neat little thing. He’s one of a kind… an absolute model student!”
That being said, Andrew does feel the horse has acquired one vice: a fetish for liquorice. “While I was injured and my partner Tarsha rode him, and she did spoil him a lot… he does have a bit of a liquorice fetish now. Anytime you walk into the office or out again he gets his ears out and puts his face on! But this week, I think every time anyone walks past, he’s gotten liquorice – I suppose he’s earnt it!” EQ
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