dressageworkingstudent:

simpleavarice:

fourponiesandihitbroke:

dressageworkingstudent:

riding-blind:

transperceneige:

European Eventing Championships 2015 | Cross-country | © Equidia

So why is Michael Jung considered the best rider in the world ?

Here
you can see him complete one of the only 3 clear cross-country round of
the Blair Castle Championships, under pouring rain and on quickly-deteriorating grounds. He’s riding the youngest horse in the
field, 8-year-old anglo-arab FISCHERTAKINOU, who’s competing for the
first time at this level.

While others are seen struggling to
stay balanced on their horses with such a tricky terrain, Jung looks picture-perfect and effortless on every jump. The accuracy of his équitation is
allowing him to stay composed, centered and perfectly balanced over
every fence, securing his young horse to stay on a perfect trajectory.
Not pictured here are his dressage test and jumping round, where he shows
the full range of his riding’s finesse and lightness.

Also, in
these gifs, Jung has a broken tibia due to his fall at Burghley the
week before – reminding us that even him can fall. But maybe not a lot
of people can then go on to win a 4* competition and two gold medals before getting surgery.

Can you leave some eq for the rest of us you bastard

Can someone who events explain why in the last three gifs he hauls back on the reins before the horse takes off? I’m confused.

Pretty sure he’s just slipped the reins to give the horse more length in his neck to get over the jumps.

dressageworkingstudent In these gifs from what I can tell he’s not actually pulling on the reins, but has slipped them significantly to allow the horse to stretch over the jump, and use his head and neck for balance on landing. Because his reins are long in order to have contact enough to steer and rebalance the horse before jumping he looks exaggerated in his arm movements, but is not actually applying the rein aid strongly. You can see it most clearly in the last gif where his reins are so long after the ditch that it looks like he’s jerking back, but in reality is just regaining some regular contact to guide the horse at the jump. Eventers often look less than classically pretty when jumping because it is imperative the horse be allowed freedom of his head to balance over these difficult technical questions and changing terrain.

In eventing you also see strong rebalancing before jumps sometimes because the horse will be in a long, low and flat outline when galloping between jumps, and needs to bring his hindquarters underneath him and become light on the forehand shortly before the jump. This can be seen quite clearly in the 6th gif where the horse is galloping through water and is checked quite firmly before the jump, so he will have the necessary impulsion for the second jump that comes only a stride later. You can also see strong checking happening at times where the horse might not be able to see the question until he’s in it – these types of fences test the rider’s preparation and the horse’s willingness to listen to that preparation. A good example is gif 7, where the horse doesn’t know the landing side of the jump is on a higher level and so, without preparation, will jump as if expecting the usual drop after a fence. You can see Jung holding his head quite firmly so he doesn’t overjump and end up skating on his nose when he lands! 

Thanks for the explanation! I don’t jump much anymore and I’ve only been on an xc course one lol.