An Evening With Tim Stockdale
Thu, 4 December 2008
A TVRC Evening out….”Tim on Tour” Merrist Wood, 19th November
For those familiar with Tim Stockdale, International show jumper, TV personality and more importantly GB Olympic representative, the very words ‘Tim on Tour’ conjure up a whole host of possibilities! Last night at Merrist Wood was the first leg of Tim’s UK tour which promised to divulge top tips to improve show jumping technique! Armed with warm clothes, hot drinks and a cheese burger in hand I settled down to watch Tim and his French groom Daniel unravel the wonderful world of show jumping. As predicted, Tim had bought with him 3 gorgeous horses, all with varying capabilities and personalities. Tim’s right hand man, Daniel was on hand not only to put up fences, warm up the horses and be generally useful but to also clean the bottom of Tim’s boots once he was on board. A shame you may think….such a down to earth sportsman had turned into a ‘Diva’ before our very eyes! Panic not, this routine-like habitual activity was to remove the waxy residue from the bottom of his boots picked up from walking in the indoor school to ensure that his stirrups stayed firmly in place whilst riding! Poor Daniel was the brunt of Tim’s jokes throughout the evening and being French, you can only imagine the commentary! Tim not only show cased his riding skill but also his semi bi-lingual tongue, which needles to say needs more work…..’Merci’…’Bon’….and ‘Frog’ didn’t get him very far with his man on the ground!
Tim showed us a horse that had only been on his yard for a few weeks and had ridden just 2 or 3 times. Very quickly he started to show signs of improvement just by changing the way of training and altering the mindset as a rider when dealing with horses that need help. Throughout the evening he showed us different exercises designed to address the issues that can be faced with horses rushing at fences, backing off fences and also general ways to improve the way of going when training your horse to be a successful jumper. Tim’s humour and upbeat personality made the evening far more than just a demonstration. He made real life situations come to life and offered solutions that were simple and easy to take home to put into practice for us normal people! One lucky raffle winner also got the chance to go to his yard in Northampton for a lesson and tour of his stables.
It was great to see ‘work in progress’ cases and not a Grand Prix steed delivering a hoof perfect performance every step of the way. It reinforced the fact that with correct training and regular discipline, horses with bad habits and poor technique, really are workable projects if you have the correct thinking and patience….oh, and of course the DVD series, book and training program by the man himself, then really anything is possible! (No payment taken for that plug!)