Jonelle Price has revealed she took a water tray to the eventing World Championships in Pratoni del Vivaro, Italy, last year to prepare her ride McClaren for the cross-country phase.
The horse has previously had problems at such fences, including having 20 penalties at an open ditch in a combination at the Kentucky Three-Day Event last April.
Speaking on a webinar organised by the Lucinda Green XC Academy, world number two Jonelle explained: “It’s no secret that McClaren is not a massive fan of a ditch, so we took a water tray with us. Pretty much every day we’d jump it, trying to replicate a ditch. Once we’d walked the course, we built a 1.25m vertical one stride out from the tray/ditch so that question was very current in his mind.”
Jonelle admitted that it led to “a bit of conversation with the FEI stewards”, but her husband and team-mate Tim Price chipped in that as long as such a piece of equipment is available to all competitors, it’s “totally legal”.
“It had to stay on the side of the road so any competitor could use it if they wanted,” added Jonelle. “Every single day we jumped that ditch and people had seen how we were preparing – when he jumped the rail-ditch-arrowhead question on course, there was a big cheer in the riders’ tent.”
Ros Canter and Lordships Graffalo at the World Championships 2022. Credit: Peter Nixon
Jonelle also revealed she and Tim had some fences specially made as part of their preparation for the event, in an effort to leave no stone unturned.
“We were taking two horses with a bit of a chequered history – they had run off more than once in their careers to date,” she admitted.
“We did a lot of homework. There was lot of talk over Pratoni and what we might see there. We suspected the ski jump fence [the Slide, with the skinnies at the bottom of the steep slope demonstrated above by Ros Canter and Lordships Graffalo] would be included and sure enough it was.
“We had a couple of cross-country fences built to replicate the idea. It wasn’t as steep, but we found a patch of land that was quite steep and took these fences over and put wings on them, just poles either side. At this point in time, in final preparation for the championships, we didn’t want the horses to have a run off, we just wanted to show them the way and make sure they were looking for the flags.
“We jumped them first a few times with wings on, then we took one wing off, we weren’t quite brave enough to jump it without any wings.”
The Prices’ preparation came to fruition in Italy – both of them had clear jumping rounds across country and they were members of the bronze medal-winning New Zealand team, with Tim and Falco also collecting individual bronze. Jonelle Price and McClaren finished their World Championships in 10th place individually.
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