john_williams_diary

(CDCTA, in Virginia, at the end of June) "I took Utah, (whose stable name is Eunice) and Sloopy, I ran him (Sloopy) in the Prelim there. He hadn't run since he'd had a piece of his splint bone removed, so I thought, 'I'll see how he holds up.' He needed an easier run before we got over here to Gatcombe. So that was good for him and Eunice was quite good really. I learned a little bit more about some of the things I need to work on with her.

"She (Utah/Eunice) did an acceptable Dressage test - not great. (John and Utah are pictured below, right in the Dressage Phase at CDGTA.) The warm up area was next to a kind of embankment, an earth embankment for the spectators to watch the races, the Gold Cup Races. There was a mother and a young daughter sitting on the top of the embankment to the warm up area. I normally notice things like this and I avoid them; but, I guess my mind was elsewhere and right as I'm trying to quietly trot by, the daughter thinks it's a great idea to roll down the hill. Rolling 5 year old daughters coming towards horses doesn't make a good mix! From that moment on my warm up was just a little bit on edge. It was my fault for not avoiding a potential situation like that.

"She (Utah) Show Jumped very well. The show jumps are actually too small for her because she's done some kind of jumper stuff. When the jumps are only 3 foot tall - to do a whole course that size on one that's tuned to jump and has been jumping bigger - it makes it a little tougher to ride. They're not jumping as well as they ought to - the jumps are too small.

"The Cross Country - she needs more training levels really. She needs to see more sights before she moves up to Prelim. (John and Utah are pictured at left below, at CDCTA.) She likes to jump, wants to jump; but, just sometimes six or ten strides in front, she'll prick her ears at it and say, "I wonder what that is. Is that really a jump? Do I really want to go that direction? That looks wierd. I've never seen a jump that looks like that before."' But, she gets there and jumps. She needs to see a little bit more. I was quite happy with her.

"She came up sixth - and that was moving up a ways after Dressage. I hadn't actually realized that I had moved up that much. I didn't make time on Cross Country. I made a detour in between a couple of the jumps, before the water. I made a detour so that I could school her through a different water, before I actually got to the water that was on our course. It was somewhat of a question for the Training levels. It was a good sized jump prior to the edge of the water and quite a wide expanse of water, which sometimes backs the horses off. It's 12 or 15 strides across the water - a lot to look at versus only two strides across. So, I schooled the water which took me kind of 15 seconds - 20 seconds - made a detour and then came around to the water that was on her course. She jumped it quite well; but, I was glad that I took time out - I don't know - I guess you could look at it as cheating slightly. I was temporarily lost on course and there just happened to be a water jump in my way, while I was lost and - oop - and then I found my way again. So I didn't actually make time. So I was surprised that we moved up that many places. (John and Utah are pictured at right on Cross Country, at CDCTA.) I can't remember where she was after Dressage - maybe 12th or so. They mailed me a green ribbon, so I assume she ended up 6th.

"Sloopy was 2nd after the Dressage, behind Kelli McMullen Temple, on a horse. Kelli always does quite a good job in Dressage. It was interesting. I was talking to Kelli afterwards - she hadn't looked at the score board - she was just assuming that I had won. She said, "Oh you're so fast on that horse," meaning Sloopy, and nobody was making time that day. I said, I'm not sure I was that fast today and, besides that, I knocked a show jump down. That perked her right up! "Oh, really, well then . . .". She had jumped clean. So she ended up winning and I stayed 2nd. It was all right with me. Sloopy was very good and happy to be out. The best part of it was, his legs looked great afterwards and I felt as if I had done my job before spending the money to put him on the airplane to bring him over here. I kind of assured myself the he was ready to go.

"Then I had a busy couple of weeks of doing clinics - one in Kentucky, one in Ohio - and those went well. Then a busy last few days of packing before we drove up to Toronto. We're getting too old to do these trips! We had to pack all day, (and) try to get two or three hours of sleep. Then, eleven o'clock at night, bring the horses in, put them on the trailer, drive all night, while the weather's a little bit cooler; get up to Toronto by, say noon - hang out get the horses settled into the barn there at the airport. Hang out all day - then, about six in the evening, they come around and start loading up things and put the horses on pallets, get them on the airplane. You fly all night. You land at Heathrow about 6:15 the next morning, England time - a couple of hours getting off the plane, and through customs, and through the Ag Station - put the horses on a lorry and 2 to 3 hours drive up here to Aston (Aston Farm, which is Mark and Sandy Phillips') - try to get the horses settled in and get a ride to the local rent-a-car place - get the rental car - by then it's six or seven o'clock that night, you've been, more or less, going no-stop for three days and two nights. It was a little easier to do ten or fifteen years ago.

(We flew on) "Air Canada. This flight is called a "combi flight," - a combination passenger/cargo. It flies four or five days of the week out of Toronto. It's a pretty good way to go, I think. It's considerably cheaper than going out of New York. Out of New York, we'd have to fly Fed Ex and they don't allow us on the plane - we'd have to catch a separate flight.

"On take offs and landings and any time that the Captain decides that the seat belt sign needs to be on, we have to be in our seats; but, the rest of the flight, within reason, we can be back with the horse - maybe not as much as a few years ago, when you could more or less stay back there the whole time - things have gotten a little bit more up tight since then.

"It's quite interesting. We actually board the airplane with the horses, while they're on their pallet.. This thing that looks like a very wide two horse trailer - very wide with movable partitions - gets brought to the stabling there it the airport. You load the horses on it. It's on kind of a trolley. A little truck comes along, hooks up to it and pulls it to the airplane. It gets slid off the trolly onto a bit of a conveyor belt - down the conveyor belt to the cargo elevator - a portable elevator that boards all the cargo into the belly of the plane. Then up the elevator you go. It gets rolled off the elevator into the cargo hold of the plane. It gets pushed around the floor until it finds the place it's supposed to be latched down, and through all of that, we're on the pallet with the horses. Then at some point, we brush ourselves off, walk through the door that separates the cargo part of the plane from the passenger part, and, almost always in the back row, we sit down in our seats.

"A friend of ours over here named Julia Bennett (drives the lorry). She actually lived in Virginia for about seven years. She sold Ready About to Sharon White, before she moved back over here to England. She's been back here for, I think, four years now, or maybe five. She runs her own little farm that she rents, a stable or yard. She does some buying and selling and a little bit of competing. She is also kind of good friends with Nina Fout and Beale Morris. For the last few years we've all been making trips over here. Julia always picked Nina up at the airport (and) took Nina to the gallops. We started to tag along with that two years ago, before 2001 Burghley, when we were over here, and it worked well. It's nice to have a local person to use rather than the commercial shippers. It's a little more convenient - the schedule's a little more flexible. It's very convenient to have her here to help us out.

"We arrived here on Saturday morning, I believe it would have been July 19th, which was exactly two weeks prior to the running of our Cross Country at Gatcombe. We did Dressage on Friday, so we had 13 days prior to that.

"Gatcombe is very nearby (to Aston Farm). Gatcombe is Princess Anne's place and she and Mark, everybody knows, were married at one time and when they split, Mark moved just barely a mile away as the crow flies, if that, probably not even that. It's a bit of a hack to get there, and a bit of an awkward hack down a narrow paved country road; but, we hacked over on Friday for Dressage and hacked back. We actually hacked over again on Saturday, (and) did our Show Jumping. Before we hacked over, Julia showed up with her lorry or van, as we would call it, and packed up some of our gear for us. But then, rather than put the horses on and ship over, we hacked over to Show Jumping, rode up to the lorry park and had horses up there for a couple of hours, put them on the lorry, changed some gear around and went back out to the Cross Country and then they got to ride back home in the lorry.

"I was very happy with both of their Dressage tests (Sloopy and Carrick). There were roughly 60 horses in each division, maybe there were 59 in one of them, which were pretty big divisions. We don't see that in the States. If we have 60 horses, they split it up into either 2 or 3 divisions. If we had 120, they'd split it up into probably 5 divisions. Here they took the 120 horses and made two big groups out of them.

"Actually, I don't recall the placings after Dressage. Sloopy was about 15th and Carrick was somewhere around 8th, maybe, give or take a little; but, I was happy with both of them. Obviously, we need to polish things up a little bit, especially on Carrick. Carrick, having done what he's done in the past - you might have expected he'd have done a little bit better after Dressage. I like to think that I give the three day event a whole lot more attention and concentration in the days and weeks leading up to it, and thus put in a better, polished performance. Not that that's any excuse for not doing a better performance at the horse trial. The two judges, especially on Carrick's test, they didn't agree with each other a bit. One of them had him placed maybe second, I think behind Gina Miles' horse.The other one would have had him placed about 20th or so. With Sloopy the two judges were only three quality points different, so they agreed on him. I guess that's why we have more than one judge occasionally, to balance things out.

"They both show jumped well. Sloopy did have one rail; but, don't worry about that. And Carrick show jumped well. He was a bit full of himself. He's only competed now, I guess that would make three times, since Spain last year and so he's a bit fresh, which is good for him. He's not usually very fresh. It was riding a little bit of a different horse - grabbing the bit and being a little bit ornery. That makes him a little bit sharper off the ground.

"Cross Country - Sloopy went first. It was a big course for him. I've always tried to take very good care of Sloopy because he's not always the bravest horse. I've always felt that if I made a mistake, or several mistakes in a row, that he could get a little worried about some jumps. I think I've always done a fairly good job of taking care of him - maybe too good of a job. Gatcombe is a very hilly course, full of lots of difficult terrain, which makes quite a fun course, an interesting course. I can't even think of a course in the states that would compare. Morven Park might come the closest; though, Gatcombe would be much more full of terrain than even Morven. In that situation, that type of a course, it's a little bit hard to be right all the time - more what I might call 'true Cross Country', where there's going to be unpredictable things. We got into several awkward moments and he handled it very well. He didn't seem the least bit discouraged for having had to be a little bit more athletic than usual to get out of an awkward spot. That was good to learn - that we can get ourselves in a little bit of trouble and he's sharp enough and confident enough to get himself out of it and go right on to the next jump without blinking an eye.

"Carrick ran around very well. I wasn't trying to go particularly fast, on either horse; although I wanted to go along - to give them a good gallop - give them a good run. Carrick was about 15 seconds faster than Sloopy and probably felt as though I was going half the speed. He just goes across the ground so sort of smoothly, without having to work at it at all. He didn't have an awkward moment anywhere. He was very good all the way around. It never really felt as though he got into second gear, well maybe into second gear; but, not third or fourth, or over drive, certainly. I'm going to have to work on that, I think. He's more of a three day horse, where I've got much more room between the jumps. Not that it takes much time to get him going; but, after I've gotten him going it takes a little bit more room to maybe put him back to a speed and a balance that would be appropriate for jumping most of the jumps or a combination - narrow stuff - on the course. That's hard for me to do at a horse trial where the jumps come right on top of each other. Just about the time I get him going somewhere, get him movin' and gallopin', I gotta start slowin' down again.

"Whereas, Sloopy would be a little different. I can plan and get him revved up and runnin' and it doesn't take so long to kind of put him back on his feet to prepare for some combination. But, even so, Carrick's still real quick.

"At this point, since last weekend went so well, we're definitely not going to Thirlestane. Not that we don't want to - we'd love to go to Thirlestane. I've never been there. It's supposed to be a very good event; but, it's at least an eight hour awkward drive there. It's not highways - hardly any of the trip up there would be on highway and for anybody that's driven on the other roads here in England, about every hundred yards you go around a round about. That's just a tough drive up and back on the horses - it's a long week and if we don't have to put them through that, we're not going to.

"There's a local event - I think it's only about an hour and a half away - it's called Brockenhurst - that we're going to go to. Carrick will do a combined test, so he won't have any more runs before Burghley. Maybe that would change. Mark might talk me into running him. I'm not finding a real good reason to run him. My purpose to coming over here was to run at Burghley, not Brockenhurst. It's been proven to me in the past that he doesn't need to run very often. A couple of years ago, we were over here. He didn't have any run between Rolex and Burghley - not a single horse trial - not even a single cross country school either. I don't like to go across country. He went around Burghley just fine. Sloopy, on the other hand, I probably will run. I'm hoping that it can be a simpler easier course and that we have just a nice, smooth run. I'd like to see how he came out of Gatcombe - make sure he still feels good about it and if he doesnt - if he's been discouraged a little bit - I want him to think this is fun and easy again.

"Today, we had P.J. McMahon - he's Irish; but a vet over here in England. He works for the US Team, off and on, when we need him. He came to do a sort of pre-Burghley check up on them and they both looked to be in very good shape."

* * * * * * * * *

(Because people have been concerned, John was asked what had happened to Amy Tryon and her three horses at Gatcombe and this is what he replied:)

"I didn't see any of it. It was at the same jump on all three. It was an awkward distance across the water, from a good size log and drop into the water to a somewhat up right corner - but, not a huge corner, just a nice corner; but, a bit up right.

"We had been encouraged to try to go across the water in three strides, which would have been a very forward three strides. Her plan was to do that and on her first horse, perhaps he didn't jump into the water as well as she would have liked. She wasn't going to get the three and (decided) to add one and that didn't work either and he fell. I don't know that you could call it a flip; but, they both rolled over the top of the corner. The next one she rode jumped in, took a couple of strides, decided she wasn't going to get the corner done right, so aborted, went around the long way; but, aborted a little bit too late and they called her for a run out at the corner - just waited a little bit too long to pull to the side. And, on the third one, jumped in, immediately decided to go the long route; but tried to get the long route done a little too quickly, cut the turn - it was kind of a U-turn back to a log in the water - cut the turn a little bit too short and he tripped and when he got his feet back under him again he was right up against the log and didn't jump it.

"I think she's going to Thirlestane. She's tough - she'll be fine! She wouldn't be the only person to have trouble there - there was a lot of trouble - quite a few people fell there or had other issues By the way, I did not get done with Sloopy there what Mark would have liked - which would have been to get there on a going getting there, and on Carrick I did manage to get that done.

"Last year, I remember, at Burghley, Wolfgang (Feld), the course designer there, seemed to like quite long distances. In a way, it could have been a nice school, a nice practice, for getting to the jump. A lot of the courses these days, with all the narrows and corners and tricky turns and whatever, we're all show jumping so much and adding strides everywhere; but, the course designers can be clever enough to cut things up so that we can't really always add one. Sometimes there's not room to add one. We sometimes have to be able to send our horses forward to a corner or a narrow."

John and Carrick were members of the USET's Gold Medal Team at The World Championships, at Jerez, Spain in 2002. Once again eventingetc is grateful to John for his time and effort in preparing this Diary.