I didnāt see what the GJ saw, I guess. I saw others that looked like they could be pulled up.
I admire his classy response to a difficult situation!
I wouldnāt exactly call what happened a trip on landing. Placing the blame on the horse seems so fitting for OT. Any good rider would admit āI misjudged the lineā or something along those lines.
I had the same reaction when I saw this post by OT. It didnāt at all represent what happened. I saw him get his horse to a bad line and distance, then flap his arms to get her over the open wide corner. Instead he pushed her right āthroughā it. Typical OT scenario.
I thought that at first too but she actually tripped on landing off the first corner, which caused him to have to ride her up to the 2nd fence and they got that terrible distance. I agree still his fault but it was started by that trip.
For the love of god, this is ridiculous. Harry Meade didnāt get this much hate last year for jumping the last two xc fences on a horse on three legs (and he really, really should have, though the ground jury also deserves the same in equal or greater measure). Oliver is not a monster for asking a horse working on her fourth five star completion to pick up after a stumble four strides before a fence (and @Jealoushe is right, she did stumble), heās not a monster for being slightly off his line, and heās not a monster for making those imperfect split-second decisions in a 3 second span of time (literally - she stumbled at 1:24:19, she ran out at 1:24:22).
Has he made some poor horsemanship decisions in the past? Hell yes. Should he be held accountable? Yes again. Should he be held accountable if he does it again? 100%. But asking a horse to try in a tough spot on cross country is not a crime. Francis Whittington put his horse on an identical line at the same question (the horse took the open side flag to the face he was so far to the wide side), but no one says anything because the horse turned itself inside out and came away clear. Tim Price isnāt being burned at the stake for āslicing a line more than anyone elseā (WFPās words) and whacking down a frangible at Joules at the Maltings on a horse doing its first 5*. Heās not being blasted for taking another risky line and nearly turning over the same horse later on course at the Dairy Mounds. I could go on, but I donāt want to, because I donāt think those riders should be raked over the coals for any of that either. Cross country riding is by its nature instinctual and imperfect, for both horse and rider, and that is not a bad thing or worthy of hate. But it makes no sense to go after Oliver for that and ignoring the same decision making from half of the rest of the field.
Not for nothing, but Oliver also displayed great horsemanship elsewhere on the course. He patted her three times after the trakehner between Defender Valley and the Leaf Pit. When she hesitated on takeoff to the second element at the Leaf Pit he pulled her long and gave her a great trip through instead of asking her to continue immediately to another identical element. He patted her three or four times again coming back out of Defender Valley. He patted her twice on landing from the big oxer before the Trout Hatchery. When she tried hard for him at the Trout Hatchery he patted her seven times consecutively before continuing. Not one other rider did half as much as that to encourage their horse, all day.
ETA: you did also see him immediately get up, go after her (while answering questions from the event team), and give her another few quiet pats while loosening her girth and rolling up the stirrup before stepping away to give the volunteers information they needed. You didnāt see him slam his hand into the ground or have any anger response of any kind after the fall (which again, is not true of every rider this past Saturday) - you saw him put his own emotions aside and care for his horse. Iām not giving him a gold medal for it - thatās the bare minimum conduct that should be accepted - but I will not complain about his televised behavior on the day either.
We lose all credibility and become easily dismissed armchair quarterbacks when the opinions expressed on this board are so obviously biased. We should be calling out poor horsemanship (and we are on another thread right now, which is horrifying) but we need to be honest about it and not paint any single human as all saint or all sinner. That helps no one, especially not the horses.
This was an interesting response. I just disagree wholeheartedly that he showed horsemanship elsewhere on the course. I donāt think riding dangerously through the Joules at the Maltings, even if the horse was provided a pat afterwards, showed horsemanship. It was very difficult to watch in person, and I can vouch that the crowd among us were equally as concerned. The crowd including myself were not surprised a fall occurred shortly after.
After seeing it, Iām out. That was enough for me.
I also donāt think a pat discounts other dangerous riding habits.
To be clear, we are 100% in agreement on that. No amount of patting or praise negates dangerous riding.
However, I wouldnāt have characterized his trip through Joules at the Maltings as dangerous riding. I watched the coverage on BurghleyTV, not in person, so I may very well have had a different vantage than you. What was it that flagged up as dangerous for you? I saw the horse come off the ground a little sticky to the final element, but from our angle he didnāt look wrong to ask her to jump from there. From the coverage, Timās trip through there on Viscount Viktor (as an example) looked like a much riskier line on a much greener horse (something that WFP mentioned on commentary, though it was fairly apparent regardless as the frangible deployed).
Right, so from my vantage point the horses jump 14 an open oxer, then make a left turn to 15 ABC(direct). Most riders jumped the oxer at 14, then 15A, and either brought the horses into a coffin canter so that they could jump the 15B at a very sharp angle to ride straight to 15C OR actually most saw the horses jump the 14 oxer and 15A then almost roll back to jump 15B and make a bending line to 15C. (The former is the quickest line)
Oliās ride through the combination came off the oxer and made the left turn to 15A without so much as a rebalance, it was just right on and kept going to 15B I donāt even know if the horse saw 15B it until the last stride and thankfully picked up its legs and kept going. For me, Iād like to see the balance change coming into an upright angled jump like that. It felt so risky to have the gas pedal on like this. You felt like the horse was either going to be the quickest round of the day OR it was going to fall.
And I can agree, to make the time you need to be quick and efficient. This ride particularly was so distinct from the probably 5 or 6 others we watched in person, itās stuck with me.
My pitchfork comment, that was very armchair of me to say. It was just a moment of āOh my gosh, these people who have been saying these things about themā¦ I think I see itā
If you look at the cross country app it looks like 15ABC is almost a direct line but thats not how it rode. 15A was set a bit away from B and C so it rode like a separate jump that as mentioned above riders jumped and then created the canter to go into B at the angle or made a roll back to B and bent the line to C
I appreciate you taking the time to type up things from your (literal on the ground) perspective.
Out of curiosity, have you had an opportunity to go back and watch his round on replay yet? I ask because he made several clear decisions earlier on course that were clearly antithetical to the strategy of ābe the quickest or fallā.
As some examples, I mentioned above how he pulled her long at the Leaf Pit when she looked a bit backed off to the first arrowhead on the direct route, and to your comment about rebalancing the coverage also showed him come down to the big triple bar at fence 13 (literally the fence before Joules at the Maltings - they were one of the only combinations we got to see jump that fence on the coverage). He half-halted four times that I could count on approach to this standalone fence - so notably that Nicola on commentary said verbatim āyou could just see Oliver really balancing herā.
Your comments sent me back to the replay, though even on rewatch I will say until the last element (15C) I thought his ride through Joules at the Maltings was textbook. I can see at least one half-halt before takeoff to 15A, and another at the apex of the turn to 15B. I didnāt catch one before the big oxer at 14, but I didnāt think he needed one either - to me they seemed to have great flow up to that fence. To your point, Nicola does point out that he keeps the turn through the combination āreally tightā (heās certainly not riding that loopy roll back that others did), but sheās saying it in a complimentary way and I donāt think thatās inappropriate. The horse has completed three previous 5*s and should be able to comfortably read the question, and the smoother line takes less out of the horses than many rapid turns from left to right. To your point about whether the horse even saw 15B, if you watch her ears she saw it at the apex of the turn, and had two full completely straight strides after that point before the fence, which she jumped beautifully and in self-balance. From the approach to 14 to the landing from 15B her rhythm doesnāt change once, which makes it really horse-friendly.
The trip gets less perfect at 15C - he ends up on a gappy distance to the last, and gets the elbows out to ride up for it (Nicola saying ānicely moved forwardā as he does) but she doesnāt quite cover as much ground as heās looking for and drifts left, which means she has to make a more significant effort to jump the last than was ideal. This is the only place where there is anything about that combination I would even want to change, and while in a perfect world of course the whole thing would have been smooth, I think his decision to ride positively was the right choice both for the split-second moment at hand, and for the production of the horse for the future.
If sheād struggled with the B element I would have understood the argument that he chose an inappropriate line for the horseās education, but she was picture-perfect from approach to 14 through to landing from 15B. At that point, his choices were to add or move up to the last, and from a safety perspective itās important that these horses are thinking forward and powerful in tough moments rather than riding backward, taking all the power away, and climbing all over the fences (thatās how you get Harry Robinson falling in the Cottesmore Leap).
As I said, I genuinely appreciate you sharing your perspective (especially since I wasnāt there), but having gone back and looked at it about a dozen times I still cannot bring myself to find fault with that ride. It was not a perfect trip, but I do not attribute the issues to Oliver being overly competitive (and there are examples from the same round that demonstrates he was not putting the win above all else) and I do think he made the best choices available to him under the circumstances.
If you arenāt sick of me yet, for my own interest Iād love to know if there was a trip through there that you saw in person that you really enjoyed - Iāll go back and give it a watch.
I need to look back through the line-up and my film. Its easy to remember the ones you didnāt like over the ones that went well. We did have media passes, so the most fun part and where we spent the beginning and end of the day was the start and finish. It was really interesting to me to see the horses come through the end. I remember particularly in the beginning there were a few horses who looked on the camera to be very tired, and but then the moment they were in the vet box looked like they were ready to be off again.
I would say I appreciated Jonelleās ride through the same complex.
We also had access to the live stream here so could watch the whole rounds. (The toughest part of being there in person, when you did walk the course aside from a fiew view points which had moniters, you cant see the rest of the rounds)
Particularly, loved Susie Berry and Irene Leva. My favorite from the whole weekend. I just think this horse will be a future top 10 finisher. Then, coming in was Isabelle Innes Ker and Highway. They both came in right after Ros and Pippa had trouble, so to see their teams so excited at the finish was really special.
Of note: DHI Purple Rain is even more stunning in person. From the leaf pit, it looked like Cosby and Copper Beach had a textbook round. After Harry Mead and Superstition went at the beginning, you thought it might have been an easy course! CHF Cooliserās gallop is the type of gallop you would show as a textbook., 10/10.
The rest, I need to look at my film. Aside from the likes of Ros and Pippa, Colorado Blue, I wasnāt as familiar with the pairs going in.
She looked uncomfortable from the start and his aggressive riding as usual landed them in trouble
