Charlotte Casiraghi's equestrian career


If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Charlotte competes at the 1* level. The Olympics are at 5* level.
 
Charlotte 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.
That would be my exact answer too:ROFLMAO:
I would say that she would be in those who will only watch the game.
 
Valentine came in 4th and Thierry came in 8th on Costa Virgio in the 2*, 1.30 or 35 meter in Chantilly today. These competitions are running parallel with the GCT which starts tomorrow.

Charlotte's not on the Chantilly start list.
 
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Charlotte rode at Valkensward today. She came in 21/32 with 4 faults at 1.10m on Ruebens Quibelle and 36/43 with 9 faults at 1.20m on Carry Duff 2. Both were 1 star.

Electra Niarchos came in 1st at 1.10m and Jessica Springsteen came in 3rd at the 1.50m, 5* competition.
 
Oh my god I am such a fool. :neutral: Valkenswaard is practically next door to where I live. I thought it was next weekend. :whistling: Never mind. Is she still going for the other days?
 
This was her first day, so probably. Thierry Rozier is also riding Tintero and Costa Vigio.
 
Charlotte came in 26/43 with 9 faults with Carrie Duff at 1.15m. She did much better and came in 9/38 with no faults at 1.25m on Ruebens. She won 40 Euros.

With the risk of jinxing her, Charlotte has not had an elimination in the last 2 competitions.
 
:previous:
I agree.
A bit daring, but Charlotte pulls it off.
 
Nice! That girl Alexandra, I dont know who she is, she has to be careful and cross her legs :lol:

Athina is very pretty!
 
Those are nice pics of Athina and Doda:flowers:

Nice to know that the girl next to Charlotte is Electra Niarchos. When I first saw the pic posted by iceflower the girl gave me a Eugenie Niarchos vibe. Then I looked better and concluded it was obviously not Eugenie... Now its funny to know it's her sister. My vibe was not wrong, she has Niarchos genes...:lol:
 
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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!!:D
 
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!!:D
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?
 
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?

It's common enough at a certain level. We have a. daughter of a 1% who has 6 horses in our barn, including one they just paid €1 million for. She's gone off for a semester in Italy and just flys home for really big competitions. Our trainer keeps them perfectly set up for her in between.
 
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?

It's not rare among wealthy amateur riders.
If never happens with pro and top level riders, of course!
You can be certain that people like Zara Phillips work hard with her horses most days of the week.

With Charlotte there is a certain pattern that repeats itself once and again. She disappears from the horse world for a while, partying, travelling to America, spending the summer by the beach, going to fashion events...) and then she suddenly reappears on horseback and magicaly her results are half decent (meaning she is not eliminated, at least, she always is in the lower half to the results list). Then, if she keeps riding her results start to go down, and after a while, when the horses start to be fed up, she start collecting eliminations...
It's quite telling.
 
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Τhanks both of you for the clarification! :)
When you start a sport, particularly when it is like jumping, you have to dedicate lots of your time for it. It's not a game.
 
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 .
 
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 .
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.
 
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Many years ago, I was an advanced riding instructor, having been trained myself by British instructors from a young age. That said, it has been five years since I owned my own horses and ten since I was actively involved. Still, horses are horses and riders are riders.

Having watched Charlotte ride I am going to say that, yes, her problem is basic fear. Maybe not of the horse or the danger - but certainly she rides with a sort of forced confidence that I have seen in several well-to-do competitors who had advanced, through an ability to purchase suitable horses, beyond their personal skill level.

She rides well enough, has a good seat and her hands are soft enough (a little loose sometimes, actually) but she has a problem of being off when and when not to let the horse do the pacing ... she rides as some jumps like she is counting strides and factoring in impulsion and at others like her eyes are closed. Horses need consistency. The great riders work out, early in their relationships with new horses, who will be boss and when (and there is ALWAYS a give and take in the great partnerships). In this regard Charlotte seems inconsistent and the result is a horse who becomes confused and loses his/her own confidence.

I remember Jay Hayes once talking to me about his great horse Zucarlos, known for bucking around a jumping course. He said it was a matter of he and the horse working out when it would be okay to buck and when it would not be. You could almost see the exchange of power as they went through a course - "I'm going to set you up for this jump" followed by "fine, now I'm going to buck". It was a rather extreme and bizarre example of what I am saying but there you have it.

That said, I think she WANTS to do well. I think maybe she WANTS to do well so much she forces it.


Video of Zucarlos, just for interest ... this is not Jay riding him, I could not find one of those as a separate youtube video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2OfDEe2WeM&feature=relmfu

YMMV,
 
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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!
 
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Charlotte jumps at a relatively low level which allows her to get away with having others train and ride her horses in preparation for a competition. Its the lazy mans way of doing things and shows a lack of motivation to improve. Even then her results are not very good. She certainly will never progress to Olympian level. She lacks the drive to train regularly to improve what talent/skills she has. I don't think she can really be taken seriously as a competitive rider. I think she is more interested in the "show" part of showjumping.
 
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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!


Hey :)


I'd only seen her ride a couple of times so I spent some time this afternoon to watch a few videos.

I still think she has a pretty good seat - stiffer than I remembered, but she seems solid in terms of balance and center of gravity. The bouncing around she does seems more to be a leg problem, related to the stiffness and lack of muscle conditioning.

I do agree with you about the hands. Yes, loose reins and hard hands can go together and it's the worst kind of problem to fix because it means the rider is generally lacking in the ... um ... ability to "connect" with the horse, often to understand the necessity of that connection. Do you know what I mean? It's what separates the riders from the horsemen/horsewomen. Charlotte is still just a rider.

The reins are the communication wire - and yes, she does tend to jerk and pull. I would, if I were her trainer, have her on a rowing machine tomorrow morning - she does this because her legs and shoulders are weak and she can't use her wrists and forearms effectively because she is not anchored with enough muscle/torque. Yanking is the only thing she can do. I mean, obviously you should be able to plant your butt hard in the saddle, anchored with your lower legs/heels and apply even pressure on a straight line from bit to elbow - but you need to be strong to do that if you are riding powerful and well conditioned horses such as she does.

Simply, my verdict is this: she does not ride enough and her body has not developed the right strengths and sensitivities. Her horse cannot know her and she cannot know it and so it will always be mediocre.

YMMV

Good talking to you :)

Edited In: Also, I wanted to comment that yes, I agree, her style is very old fashioned. Has a Prussian Army officer look to it.
 
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