FanofMonaco
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Charlotte competes at the 1* level. The Olympics are at 5* level.
That would be my exact answer tooCharlotte does not compete at the same level as Olympic equestrians so the only way she will be there is if she is in the stands watching.
So no particular contact and connection with her horses. Such a pitty.I was going to go with a: what? she is riding the Vienna GCT leg when it is obvious that she hasn't been training at all with all that travelling?
But the truth is that she always gets her best results when she has not been training and someone else has been riding her horses, so...
Maybe that's the good strategy, after all!!
azure said:So no particular contact and connection with her horses. Such a pitty.
Because i have no idea with this sport, do some riders usually do this? I mean, when a rider has no time to train with his/her horses (something Very weird but nevermind) do they give them to their coaches to prepare them?
So no particular contact and connection with her horses. Such a pitty.
Because i have no idea with this sport, do some riders usually do this? I mean, when a rider has no time to train with his/her horses (something Very weird but nevermind) do they give them to their coaches to prepare them?
I don't want to open this conversation about how much talented - or not - Charlotte is.. Actually if she was really talented she could do better. I cannot understand why she keeps doing something that she is afraid of! You are much more experienced than me, but have you seen some pictures of her being scared while ridind her horses? That's unbelievable. One of her mistakes (i think - because i m not an expert in this sport and i don't want to talk/write extended paragraphs about something i don't actually know) is that she doens't approach her horses, she has no communication with them. The horses practice with Char's coach and have learnt to listen to him and think he is the one who rides them. So when Charlotte suddenly appears on their backs, they get lost and feel her as stranger, who doesn't know how to treat them. The sport maybe depends 50 percent on the rider and the other 50% belong to the horse. But when a rider hasn't make this fundamental step to communicate with his partner/team (the horse), the game loses its goal.Sadly, this is sport that requires quite a lot of money. Of course it's not enough. If you want to go to the top you need talend and hard work, but if you can buy great horses and pay a team of riders to train them, you can reach medium-high amateur level quite easily.
A horse with power and talent who knows his job can take an average rider more than half the way. And probably thanks to Gucci Charlotte can allow herself to burn horse after horse at her service.
If you think about it Charlotte always gets better results with new horses instead of all ones (when normally the longer you know a horse the better are the results)
First, her top horse was Tintero, until he got fed up. Then came Carry as her number one. But Carry is obviouly getting tired. When she rides him a couple of days in a row he starts collecting bad results and eliminations.
Now, her new rising star is Costa Virgio who is an amazing horse, ready to jump everything they put in front of him and who forgives all her mistakes. Until he will get bored too .
Hi, Catherine!
Probably turning this into a technical discussion is going to be too boring for most forum members, but your input is really interesting, and I really would like to discuss with you about it.
I'm afraid I don't agree with you in some of your percetpions about Charlotte, though. In my opinion she clearly has a very hard hand and she is excesively controlling of the horse's head (yes, some times the reins may be loose, but that means nothing. you can have loose reins and a hard hand, and tight reins and a light hand).
I'm not mad about her balance either. She loses it quite often in mid-air.
I agree with you, though, about her having a serious problem with fear. Not fear of the horse or the physical risk, but maybe fear of not doing well enough. Actually, I'm not sure I would use the word fear, but "lack of confidence". She doesn't seem to be confident enough on her horses, she is too controlling, while she doesn't have the skill to really control things. Her horses are far more skilled than her but she gives the impression of someone who needs to control things, who doesn't let go easily and as a consequence she is not at ease in a give and take relationship with her horse, the way you describe it.
When you watch Charlotte ride she always looks too contrived and forced. She never flows, and never lets the horse flow. She has quite an old fashioned riding style actually, that's one of the reason why I think she should quit the Roziers for a while and try to go training under a differente kind of coach, with a more modern approach to horse riding.
Anyway, her main problem, imo, is that she doesn't respect the galop of the horse, she never lets it flow, and 8 times out of 10 she takes the jumps from a wrong distance.
She is never regular in her galop, and she always realizes the approach is wrong when it is too late, and then she either has to hurry and push the horse forward, or pull back and try to make the horse take one more step (i'm afraid my english horse vocabulary isn't very wide but being a horsewoman yourself you will understand what I mean, I hope).
Luckily for her, she has the means of affording horses who literaly fly over 1,30 jumps, and who take her over the fences from every distance. But she asks too much of them, and finally they all get fed-up.
About her will to do well... I'm sure she does! But I am not sure she is willing to invest any effort in it. You just have to look at her schedule of the last couple of months to see that she's scarcely spent any time in Paris, training.
I really enjoyed Zucalros video. One of my friends has a 1'30 level mare who always bucks after she's taken a good jump. The days she doesn't do it you know for certain there is something wrong with her health!