Anky Van Grunsven - broken leg

[Lgd]

Interesting titbit on another website www.eurodressage.com

Anky has apparently broken her leg (badly) after being bucked off by Gestion Joker, one of her GP horses. Apparently he has been off last year with a leg injury but has although back in work has not competed. Rumours are that he doesn't 'agree' with the Anky/Sjef training approach (riding deep) and that Idool was pulled out of the Dutch WEG team for similar reasons.

[ros]

Oh dear. What a pity. :p

(I expect I'll get struck down by lightening now.)

[Kerry's Partner]

Well that'll be two of us!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Sue Carnell]

Is Idool the horse in the video on www.saddletude.com - "Anky trains a new prospect", which was at the Sidney Olympics? If you want to have a look, go to Saddletude, click on dressage, then find the link there to Saddletude dressage video archive, then click on dressagevid at the top of the page to get to a list of archived videos. The Anky one is, Anky warm up. This link might work:
http://www.saddletude.com/video/video320.cfm?vid=40

Sue
sue@eclipse.co.uk

[Kerry's Partner]

Well I watched that video Sue - hence my cryptic response to Ros. I hope others follow your links whether or not it's the same horse.

Sandra

[judyl]

Crikey.... Hopefully he was allowed a long rein to walk back to the stable!

[Mehitabel]

crikey indeed, having watched that video. :eek:

[Dizzy]

Little wonder (if its the one who ejected her) he bucked her off. I had a sore kneck watching!

Lesley

[virtuallyhorses]

Hmmn can't see the video but I gather from the comments that there is some disapproval ...?

I've seen Anky at the Equitana Clinics and have nothing but admiration for her riding and philosophy - if the implication is that she is training too deep\overbent ,whatever, too much its certainly not the impression that I got or that she advocates.

Instead she is very compassionate toward the horses and makes a great deal out of ensuring riders\trainers understand that each horse must be treated differently according to its personality and needs. She does train with many different head and neck positions, (including too high AND too deep) rather than 'getting them stuck' as she calls it in the competition position. Her reasoning is that the horse should be flexible and responsive to her aids - ie she should be able to ask for any degree of flexion and bend (within reason) . however she is also very adamant that the horse should be worked to the level that it can cope with (progressive training) and that every horse must have frequent rest breaks to stretch and relax within the training session.

Before getting too smug (I may be unfairly reading between the lines here, if so I apologise in advance) we should also remember that Bonfire was also very keen on bucking when he was young and he didn't turn out too badly as I recall ;)

[Mehitabel]

well, i could see the video but have no other knowledge of how she trains. if i rode petal like that i'd be dumped in about 3 minutes and i doubt she'd let me catch her for a week! it may not be representative of her methods, but it isn't pleasant to watch.

[Lgd]

There has been a lot of criticism of the deep and BTV methods by both trainers and veterinarians. The strain on the neck ligaments is phenomenal and many horses trained this way are starting to show up with permanent damage to neck and back and are being retired at a very early age. There is also worrying data from mainland Europe as to the wastage rate in horses - the average age of death for competition type animals (i.e. excluding racehorses) in Germany is now 6 or 7 years old (must confess I can't remember exactly but it is pretty horrific, either way).

From a classical point of view horses trained in this way do not work correctly in the higher level collected work such as piaffe and passage. Look at a video of horses trained in this way and almost without fail they have poor quality piaffe and passage and never truly lower the quarters and sit underneath as they should. If you want to see what a true piaffe should look like, find a video of Chris Bartle riding his Olympic dressage horse Wily Trout - he had a beautiful classically correct piaffe, always got very high marks for it in competition and was widely acknowledged as having one of the best piaffes seen in modern dressage.

The late Reiner Klimke was also very anti-deep and he trained many difficult horses without resorting to this, the great Ahlerich being one of them, I believe he trained in excess of 30 horses to GP level - while working as a lawyer as well!

[ros]

Hell, that IS worrying!

As to lowering the quarters, Jill (Mossy) and I were lucky enough to see some video of Heather's taken while she was in Portugal, showing Heather's own stallion Rei, and some of Luis Valenca's young horses. To watch the way these horses have the ability to sit is quite staggering - you might say a culture shock! A lot of it was done in hand, and none of it looked at all forced - the horses offered it themselves.

I can't remember having read a book by any master of equitation who does not make it clear from the outset that one of the most important aspects of correct training and riding is that it enables the horse to "last": obviously not a major consideration in some competition yards nowadays! This is the "throwaway society" gone mad :(

[AmandaW]

I can't remember having read a book by any master of equitation who does not make it clear from the outset that one of the most important aspects of correct training and riding is that it enables the horse to "last": obviously not a major consideration in some competition yards nowadays!

Ros, this struck a chord with me. I have always thought of schooling as a way of keeping your horse sound. Rather like the human equivalent of the Alexander technique. The deep method makes me think of ballet. The over exagerated extention of limbs and joints seems to result in fairly lame humans too!

[judyl]

You only have to read in the Horse & Hound at the results pages of horses of 6/7 being competed at Prix St Georges, etc. That means surely that when they were 4/5 and not fully matured, that they were being worked to a high level. Even if horses show they have the ability, I don't think it's right to work a horse in excess with regard to its skeletal and muscular development.

A horse won the Prelim Championship at 4 and the next year was competing at Medium/Advanced Medium.

[Lgd]

Judy1 - this is something else that worries me - and was raised by vets at the Global Dressage Forum - too much too young.
There are rules now that they can't compete PSG until at least 6yo, but IMO that is still too young. My 'baby' is 7½ now and no way is she ready for this level of work, she is fairly established at elementary now and MIGHT go Medium by the end of the year IF training continues going well. She is only just learning her changes now and is asked for baby half steps in piaffe very occasionally. It will be at least a year before I would even contemplate canter pirouette work. I usually figure on working one to two levels higher at home than the level I am competing at so you are quite right that they must be doing intensive advanced work at 4 and 5 - scary.

[Kerry's Partner]

Well I found the viewing quite upsetting to watch and it certainly made me cringe. I wonder sometimes why some us worry so much about our own horsemanship/riding skills.

[virtuallyhorses]

OK Seen the video now - and from my previous post you already know that my views are prejudiced with admiration - however I still don't see that much to be aghast at. Yes, he is VERY overbent for the first half (of a few seconds of video) but he's not deep at all, so I'm not sure why everyone's talking about how bad working deep is - his head never goes below his chest.

He actually has a reasonable amount of rein and is 'choosing' to go overbent (a resistance?) rather than lifting his forehand more (as young horses will do sometimes). However, you will notice that half way through he returns his head to a vertical position and the rein is then 'released'. ie I don't think that they are trying to achieve this 'upsetting' head\neck position. I wish I knew more dutch. At the end of the video the contact is released for a rest break - the total video time is only a minute so I would be loathe to have them shot at dawn for cruelty on the basis of this.

Quite frankly I've seen photos of horses @ WEG and other competitions on the cover of dressage today that are as overbent as this.

With regard to lowering of the hindquarters I think its very unfair to continually compare warmbloods, TBS and other modern competition horses to the Spanish and Portuguese horses - they are of completely different conformations. There's a very good discussion on the 'baroque' horse type vs the modern horse @ http://www.horse-gate.com/dressurgeschichte/1/ehome.htm

OK, I'm outed now as an Anky fan so I'll take my shocking views elsewhere to reek havoc on the other boards ;)

[Kerry's Partner]

Forgive a reply please from someone who will not debate overbent, too deep etc. But if you watched the video did you not see how her legs flapped about with the attendant spurs which dug in? Also, if I landed like that on Kerry's back she would have me off.

[ros]

Hey Viv - no-one said you couldn't be an Anky Fan AND a New Rider;)

However, I don't see why one shouldn't compare the Iberians with the Warmbloods etc? That post was just a comment rather than a comparison, but now we're on the subject, maybe these big, strapping horses - impressive and beautiful as they are, don't get me wrong - have lost some of their versatility; and if because of their build they've become less able to "take the weight back", then what WOULD be unfair would be for trainers to disregard that difference, and fail to modify their training methods and programmes to suit the horse's individual ability and talents. And maybe it's in such attempts to achieve the SAME degree of collection, the SAME piaffer, the SAME passage, the same whatever, that we find force rearing its ugly head - maybe sometimes simply through lack of understanding - and damage being done?

That's not a criticism of any particular trainer - it's just a thought. There's rather a good photo of Granat in one of Sylvia Loch's books, objecting to a request from his rider. He was such a great big magnificent horse, although if I remember rightly his career was somewhat of a flash in the pan. I don't know what happened to him, but he's what made me wonder about all this.

[virtuallyhorses]

Ahh good point Ros! Yes, I agree entirely viva la difference! Each breed and type (even individual horse) brings its own 'beauty' and movement to dressage depending upon its strengths and personality and I entirely agree that the training should be attempting to bring this out, not rigidly copying a 'book ideal'.

I'm also glad to see you use the word versatility - I've often looked at the iberians and thought - "lovely! but couldn't gallop to save itself " and if I'm in a police riot squad I don't want to be on some 14hh Lippizaner - versatility works both ways - ok I'm just stirring now :D ;)

[ros]

Oh wonderful! Now I have this vision of you on a Lippizaner in the middle of a crowd of football hooligans doing a capriole :D :D That should send 'em flying! (And that's called making the best of what's available:) )

[judyl]

Now it's not only Lippizaners and Andalusians that do capriole!! My cob Shade did an extremely good impression of capriole the other week when it was snowy. She was in such a mood because she couldn't get at the grass and she wanted to roll that she did the preparatory movements. Bouncing from front legs to back legs back and forth, back and forth - with a not very ladylike squeal going on at the same time! To see a black (fairly thick set but not too heavy) cob carrying on this way was enlightening to say the least. Even though she seems fairly mundane in her way of going (she has got fairly good paces but not a warmblood(!) she didn't half get some height going!

Bless her to bits!

And to LGD, I've had her since 4 and she didn't stop growing into her body until 7 - 7 1/2.

:D :D

[galadriel]

Kat did something I called a capriole today (it wasn't really, but it looked like an attempt to). It was adorable!

We had snow last night--very rare here--and all the horses were antsy and bouncy today.

[Mehitabel]

petal quite frequently caprioles - she does it instead of bucking when she's in one of those moods. she once left the ground in her spooky corner at f and landed the other side of a, facing the other way! i'm told it looks very impressive from the ground...

[Lgd]

Judy you're lucky, my older mare didn't finish her growing until the winter of her 8th year. Must confess I didn't notice, it was my chiropracter who reckoned she looked bigger, I thought it was because she was really muscling up and looked bigger. To solve the argument we put the stick on her and she had grown, albeit on about 1/4". Her sire was a similar age when he matured, so I shouldn't have really been surprised.
Our 'baby' has just filled out dramatically so I guess she has just finished her growing and she is 7½ now.

[cocoa]

Why can't I see the video??
When I click on Sue's link it takes me to the video but it won't play. How frustrating!

[Kerry's Partner]

I don't know why Sue's link doesn't work for you but if you cannot access it for any reason then, personally, I'd say that except to understand all of the posts, you haven't missed anything at all. That is of course according to my own personal standards (and I'm a hopeless horse owner and rider imo/according to my own standards)!!!!!!!!!