I can’t believe I had never heard of this horse. He was sooo sharp. When I looked him up I was like ok he won Burghley? Clearly did become amazing lol
Totally! After watching them all though there is definitely something to learn about the way to ride and NOT ride XC lol
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Agree about the stirrups! And just amazed how most didn’t have any base of support or position.
I was amazed at the scores too! Imagine being top ten at a CCI with over 100 pp lol half of them are!
I honestly don’t mind our skinnies and flowers on course these days (I think the skinnies test a different skill set to the big rider frighteners and I think both are important, and if the organizer wants to spend money on flowers as a groundline, fine by me I suppose). That said, I also really loved the use of terrain we saw. Why not both??
Loved it!!! Wish they’d bring that back as well!
I know everyone is mentioning Sassy Reason (and I totally agree he was so much fun to watch), but I quite liked Adonis too. Careful but so brave - exactly what an event horse should be!
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I absolutely loved seeing Adonis again. It was such a pleasant surprise.
When I first started eventing, my instructor told me to pick a horse & rider combo I wanted to emulate. I picked Mike Plumb and Adonis 
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My thoughts on Checkmate video:
Holy hannah, things were different. Not a lot of skinnies, which is why the riders had trouble with the line at the end. Not a lot of dressing. I liked the more straightforward nature of the water in particular. I felt the coffin was wild, but riders were mostly opting for the safe route. This course looked like it required a lot of bold and smart riding, plenty technical without being too technical, and I think riders have gotten so much better now. It was also interesting that there was more than one way to successfully navigate a jump, not just based on route, but on stride, for example, or the horse’s jump, or the situation. The water was the perfect example–three or four strides from the vertical to the first table? To the narrow? The Punchestown Puzzle was another example of riding options, though there were fewer.
I know they talked about horses running out of gas, but they looked fitter to me late in the course than the horses at some of the modern events.
Was Stevenson’s horse lame after he got back on? (33:00) I question that decision to continue, and I am a big fan of the MR. I actually wasn’t sold on the RF elimination rule initially, but now I actually like it. This is one reason.
Interesting that there were some real pullers–most would not do well today.
Some rule changes from my childhood that I’d forgotten–penalty boxes, but also 5 instead of 4 faults in the SJ.
Interesting interview with Paige Lockton (23:00). Mike Plumb’s experience shows in his interview at the end.
I liked the SJ on grass and with the bank. I actually liked the course a lot!
The D scores at the start! Compare those to today’s scores.
It would be interesting to see what someone like Michael Jung would look like over a course like this–would Sam have done well over the Punchestown Puzzle?
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100% lame. You can see right as the horse gets up he takes a quick stumble step to take the weight off his left front and continues to favor it as the rider gets back on. Trots around lame and then at the canter has a weird hitch in it and I’d bet money the stumble after the next fence was because that leg gave out/hurt on the landing. I know it was a different time, but I’m amazed they let him ride off.
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Okay, that’s what I saw, too. Yikes.
I mean, there is some great riding on display. I appreciate how well conditioned the horses are. It’s nice change of pace to remember when XC wasn’t skinny after skinny or as colorful as a show jump course. It was interesting to see dressage on the grass at Fair Hill; I grew up in Chester County, PA, but right on the MD line with Fair Hill in my backyard. I don’t remember the dressage ever being on the grass, but then I probably wasn’t ever spectating on dressage day as a kid or teenager.
But the negative of what I remembered of eventing in the 1990s was fully on display in these videos, specifically the overly aggressive riding and reckless bad decisions. I grew up believing the majority of eventers were not good horsemen. These videos reminded me why I thought that way.
In 2021, I would say eventers are among the best horsemen in horse sports. The priorities of event riders have definitely shifted as the old guard has retired and the younger generation has stepped up to fill their shoes. It’s funny, too-- the handful of riders shown in the videos who are still active, either competing or training, have definitely embraced the changes of today. But I couldn’t tell you what happened to most of the riders in the videos whose riding made me cringe.
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The horsemanship in eventing is exactly what drew me to it. I remember watching a 4* event for the first time on TV maybe 10 years ago or so and saw someone pull up for no immediately obvious reason (no refusals or close calls) about halfway through XC, right in the middle of a big gallop stretch and just say their horse didn’t feel quite 100% today and so they were going to save him for a different weekend. I was so impressed that after traveling so far, spending so much time and effort, not to mention money, they were able to set aside their desire to compete and prioritized their horse above it all. I don’t remember anything else about the competition, who won, or how good their ride was, but I remember that rider.
I was a bit surprised talking to my trainer a few weeks ago about eventing. She’s a pretty old school George Morris style H/J trainer and had a pretty negative attitude towards it and strongly implied that she didn’t think highly of the horsemanship. After watching these videos though I can 100% understand why if that’s the era she’s picturing.
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I just had the same realization. I’m younger, didn’t get into real eventing until early-mid 2010s, and I have moved recently to a more non-eventing area. My barn owner is totally against eventing, but I can now understand why. This is some of what she saw when we had more local events here, and I try to get her to realize its not all the same anymore.
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Later in the 90s, I worked for some local eventing barns and decided really quickly nothing about it was for me. (Side bar: back in the 90s I actually got PAID to clean stalls and groom which is practically unheard of today)
At the time, I was also starting to resell a lot of TBs off the track. More than once, a horse’s racing owner asked me to please not resell their horse to an eventer. It’s pretty bad when the racing people don’t want their horses going into the sport because of the reputation.
I kept my distance from eventing until I moved to Area 3 and got hooked up with the nicest group of eventers in the late 00s. I would have never met them if it wasn’t for COTH. They were nothing like the eventers of Chester County I grew up with. If it wasn’t for them, I probably wouldn’t have realized how much the sport changed in the 21st century. There are certainly still problems, but I find the collective mindset of the participants to be so much healthier than it was back then. It’s become the sport of dedicated horsemen and women instead of a sport littered with adrenaline junkies who care more about competition than the welfare of their animals.
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Agree about Adonis. The way he just kept going through that coffin with no hesitation whatsoever even after slipping and hitting that first rail hard with his hind legs was impressive. I was also reminded of what a fantastic rider Mike Plumb was.
I gasped when he kept going after obviously being lame.
There were several that were demonstrably lame – including MASH. I don’t know how the riders didn’t feel that lameness, no excuse then or now. Even Adonis had several very rough steps (and JMP brought him back to a trot briefly and you could see) off of the hill.
I can certainly understand why the perception of the sport was and is so poor after that reminder. It’s definitely one of the reasons I don’t miss those days. Our understanding of the horse and our understanding of a sound versus lame horse have gotten so much better in this day and age.
It’d be interesting to see, in a hypothetical world, these courses duplicated and ridden by a modern horse, rider, and in a modern saddle. So, so much has changed beyond just the frills/decorations in front of the jump.
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In addition to Sassy Reason and Adonis, I don’t think anyone has mentioned Molokai and Dorothy Crowell (Dorothy Trapp in the video). It was a real treat to see him go. I don’t think I have ever seen footage of him before and if I saw him in person back in the day, I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to remember. He was an OTTB by Hawaii. Hawaii was one of those stallions whose name comes up a lot in sporthorse conversations, but I really never had any firsthand experience with his offspring. Watching Molokai go, it was easy to see how Hawaii earned his reputation as a sire of sporthorses.
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I only watched part of the Checkmate video and honestly I was cringing from the very beginning when the person doing the course preview mentioned something along the lines of ripping the horse around or ripping the horses teeth in order to take the serpentine option at the chevrons towards the end of the course. The commentators happily talking about floating teeth with the bit as people were being run away with just added to the general ick factor.
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I found the commentators to be cringy, too. They were a little too jovial in situations where the potential for disaster was quite high.
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I wish there was a way to arrange this. I expect it would be very interesting to see where today’s riders could improve upon past performances, and where they would fall short. There are always things to learn.
I had a poster of Molokai growing up I got at Rolex lol
The whole thought process of the riding was different, angry in the bridle, digging those spurs in etc. But if you watch a few of the later years you see how riders who have obvious style and position and training start destroying the competition because they use their good training over their aggressive riding to get around.
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