I’d been aiming Sisko for this competition since this time last year, believing that it would be just what my “goldfish” (the length of his attention span) needed as I try to develop him into the upper-level event horse I always thought he’d be since I first sat on him in January 2008. It did turn out that the training-level three-day event was perfect for him, and the result of this year-long quest is that Sisko has graduated with honors from training level and is ready to move up to preliminary level in the spring.

(The lawyers tell me that I have to say here that I’m the press officer for the Galway Downs events, but I can absolutely assure you that I’d be writing this even if I didn’t have that job. So, to continue…)

I hadn’t seen a training-level three-day until last year this time, when Galway Downs offered it for the first time.  Although I’m an absolutely fervent believer in the classic-format three-day event (a subject I’ve written about several times in this blog and elsewhere), I wasn’t sold on doing it at the training level. Why do we have to dumb the level down to have this, I wondered? You can’t really do steeplechase over three fences and only 800 meters, at just 540 meters per minute, I believed.

But then I saw training-level horse after horse respond to steeplechase and roads and tracks, and then cross-country, the same way horses do at preliminary, and I heard rider after rider exclaim how unbelievably fantastically their horses jumped on cross-country, like they never had before. And I thought this would be great for Sisko, who has had serious concentration problems and, despite being an athletic and powerful horse (and a very scopey jumper), has had trouble feeling confident galloping down to cross-country fences.

Sisko has matured and improved all through the year, jumping clear on cross-country in all five of his events since the first weekend in March. We even finished second in our last start, in late August. But in the two months since then, he’d really matured physically and mentally (he’s 8 now), even though he missed about two weeks of work in September with a staph infection in his left front leg. So I was hoping that he’d give me his best at Galway Downs. And he did, finishing ninth of 27 starters, adding only 4 faults in show jumping (my fault for making a horrible error at one fence) to his original dressage score.

Sisko started off with his best dressage test ever, although it wasn’t his best score since the two judges were understandably marking 2 to 4 percentage points tougher than usual. He was the most rideable and focused he’s ever been, just having one blow-up that carried us through three of the last four movements. The score put us tied for 17th, and I reminded myself (once again) that he’s still very much a work in progress on the flat.

Speed-and-endurance day on Saturday was what Sisko and I were waiting for, and it was a wait too, because we didn’t start on phase A until 3:30 p.m. He made me laugh on A, the 14-minute first roads and tracks phase, because he was a bit spooky and seemed to think he was out on a trail ride, with horses trotting past him every few minutes.

When we reached the start of the steeplechase phase, which at Galway Downs is on a lovely training track, he seemed to remember the school we’d had there two days earlier, and he was off and galloping from the start. He jumped all three fences well, particularly the second, which he leaped perfectly out of stride. When I was an amateur steeplechase jockey, we called that kind of brave, smooth effort “pinging” the fence. It brought back memories.

When we got back on phase C, which followed almost the exact same route as phase A, he knew that this was no trail ride and refused to walk. I could feel him telling me, “Hey, I know something else really fun is coming!” He finally walked the last 75 meters to the finish of phase C and the 10-minute box.

When I got on him with about three minutes to go before my start time on cross-country, he gave me the same feeling race horses used to give me: Bouncing on his toes, energy coursing through every part of his body, craning his head to look toward the first fence and the rest of the course. Power and eagerness, just barely contained—rather like sitting in the cockpit of a rocket that’s ready to launch and in the final seconds before ignition. It’s just about the neatest feeling I know, a feeling I live for.

And when the starter said “go” and I closed my legs, Sisko did launch, perfectly, now completely focused on the first fence that lay 75 meters dead ahead of us. He absolutely “pinged” it and the second fence too, on our way to the course’s first tests at fences 3 and 4.

This was the sixth time I’ve ridden a horse in a classic-format three-day event, going clean on cross-country in each of them. And each time I’ve had that same feeling—of the horse having discovered a new sense of purpose and power, of having a heightened sense of joy about his job. As we landed from the attention-requiring three-jump combination at fence 4, I could feel we were going to jump clean. Sisko knew exactly what he was doing out there and was only waiting for me to tell him which fence to go to next.

Since that ride on Saturday, I’ve pondered why this phenomenon happens at classic-format three-day events and come up with three reasons.
 
First, trotting and cantering around roads and tracks and steeplechase gets the horse truly going forward in an eager but relaxed attitude.

Second, neither horse nor rider is subjected to the usual pressure of the warm-up ring. The usual scene in a cross-country warm-up area is a cross-section of a few horses galloping around barely under control, a few horses mincing around at the trot or canter and not looking like they’re going anywhere at all, and a few horses in good balance and a more forward attitude who are being drilled to jump the warm-up jumps perfectly.

Third, and related to both of those points, is that we riders reach the starting box physically and mentally warmed up and in a calm, forward attitude. Any physical or mental stiffness has been warmed up and away by having ridden for 30 or 40 minutes across the countryside and at speed. We’ve re-established our partnership with our horses during that time, and the steeplechase has warmed up our eye for galloping at speed and the balance needed to jump the cross-country jumps that way, in a way that the usual warm-up fences simply cannot.

Plus, during those 30 or 40 minutes, we’re thinking mostly about our horses’ physical state and cooling him and preparing him for the cross-country test, instead of about how nervous we are about the cross-country course. We reach the start box in a sort of Zen state. My friend Jimmy Wofford famously says, “It’s OK to have butterflies before cross-country, as long as the butterflies are flying in formation.” Well, phases A, B and C get them flying in formation when you reach the start box.

I’ve long said that I believe the Army guys from Europe and the United States who created the three-day event 90 years ago really were horsemen who knew what they were doing. Maybe they were human sports psychologists too.