When you usually decide to go and buy a ticket for showjumping performance that friends or usually fans have highly spoken about, you would expect to see a very beautiful thing happening but it does not always happen. It is quite understandable, either the horse or the performer might not be in their best days or something unexpected happens in the middle of performance.
As you all know, it is really easy to distract a horse. Just think about the opposite for a moment. As long as it is easy to distract them, then it is logically very difficult to keep them focuses on the performance. That’s why I constantly mention that horse trainers have a very difficult job to do. Taking care of horses is one thing, understanding them and helping them improve is another and the second one is way more challenging. Usually trainers use a lot of tricks and treats to keep their horses focused.
Only when you watch videos of rehearsals you are able to understand what it takes to prepare this horse for a maximum 30-minute performance. It must be frustrating for all these trainers and performance to see that something does not go well in the day that everything needs to be perfect and this is the case with the duo in the video below.
They might have probably thought that they were about to deliver one of the best performances but a lot of things went wrong. It had some positive aspects as well, but the main probably that was quite evident is the fact that the rider was struggling hard to stay on the back of the horse whenever they jumped over an obstacle. Personally speaking, I do believe that in this case it is the rider’s fault.
Also, for a few other obstacles the horse did not feel quite confident to jump over and at the very last moment, you would see it stop because the obstacles were quite intimidating which is something that we are used to, because such fails are not unfamiliar to us. As I said, the problem in this performance is not the horse but the rider as he failed to properly do his job, however, I would not like you to be harsh with him because such things happen and it would be devastating to a person to highly criticize his outcome after long hours of work.