Take a break with ... Richard Davison

Sweep with Richard on the canter track

Introduce yourself

I am first and foremost known as an international dressage rider and a coach, but amongst my other roles, I’ve done a four-year term as British World Class Performance Manager and have been a coach to the UK Sports World Class Development Show Jumping Program for almost a decade. I’ve been on the organising team behind many high-level competitions and found myself a member of many influential committees working in the equestrian industry around the world.

Where are you based? Tell us a little about your location and facilities

I am based in Staffordshire where we have our family home and training facilities. These include indoor and outdoor arenas, a grass jumping paddock, canter track, covered horse walker, solarium and internal stabling for both our resident horses and a separate block of stables for horses whose riders are visiting for training.

What is your main competition discipline and at which level(s) are you involved?

Although I am a dressage rider and I have trained the World Class Development Show Jumping Squad for more than 15 years. I also have my own show jumpers. I have competed at four Olympic Games and have won both Olympic and European medals.

Tell us a little about your top horses

Bubblingh is my current grand prix horse. He is home bred out of Ballaseyr Royale, the mare I rode in the Athens Olympics, World Games and also in the European Championships ,where she won a bronze medal. Bubblingh was long listed for the Rio Olympics but it came a bit early for him, so it would be lovely if he makes it to the Tokyo Olympic Games.

What have been the highlights of the current season so far?

Bubblingh hasn’t been out yet this season and I plan to start him at Windsor. We’ve had some good success with our jumpers in Florida this year and when my son Joe returns at the end of March, we will get six or seven of the show jumping horses to shows in the UK and Europe. Our show jumpers compete internationally and last year had a couple of British Team duties.

What other major successes have you enjoyed in your equine career to date?

Everyone will expect me to answer this with competition highlights such as big championships, Olympics, National titles and more, but the truth is I do this because I love training and riding horses. Hence my greatest personal successes and satisfaction is when an up and coming horse learns a flying change, or suddenly gets the transition from piaffe to passage, or finds an even stride to a jump. I can’t even list what I’ve won as it becomes history the following day, but I can bore anyone to death about the horses I’ve trained over more than forty years !!

With whom do you train regularly?

My wife Gillian is a successful grand prix rider so we help each other. When we are at big shows together Carl Hester and I have always helped each other, as we’ve done that for so many years now.

Which three tasks do you carry out EVERY day on the yard?

Well, the most important one at the start of everyday is to work my sheepdog! She is called Sweep and does not let me do anything else until we’ve done that.

Then it’s a walk around the yard to check each horse and catch up with the staff.

After that I write a list of the timings of the daily training, together with any other information about the day.

How do your horses benefit from the use of the ArcEquine and why do you feel it is an important element in your success?

We use ArcEquine to maintain healthy cell function. Every part of the horse’s body is made up of cells. There are many different types but it’s critical that they are all able to function optimally, as this maintains the physiological balance.

In equestrian sport it is often impossible to avoid injury and inevitably some structures, especially soft tissues, become weakened or damaged. We have found ArcEquine helps the horse to restore its body back to a healthy state with minimum delay.

What happens next?

This year we have a busy year with the top dressage horses and building up the team of jumpers. We will see how each horse is developing and work out a provisional competition plan accordingly.

What is your favourite meal?

Steak – you knew I’d say that didn’t you?!

What are your most worn items of clothing

Breeches!

Snow or beach holiday?

Snow

Dogs or cats?

Both, but of course Sweep comes top of the pile.

And finally – Tea or Coffee?

Both – coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon (but no biscuits, sadly).

Richard Davison joins ArcEquine stable of advocates

As the ArcEquine unit gains increasing credibility amongst vets, leading insurers and successful riders, Olympic dressage rider and trainer Richard Davison has become the latest rider to publicly endorse ArcEquine’s innovative technology as beneficial by joining the company’s high profile stable of Rider Advocates.

Richard Davison training at home. 

He says: “ArcEquine plays an important role in my competition horse management regime, especially in injury prevention and accelerating recovery after training and competitions.”

For ArcEquine managing director Ian Thirkell, working with high profile riders and trainers like Richard provides valuable opportunities to enhance the knowledge base and advisory support available to horseowners both in the UK and in other global markets. He says: “The feedback we receive daily and the phenomenal results that people are seeing when treating injuries with ArcEquine, including those horses previously given a very poor prognosis, is increasing the amount of data we have on the huge potential of microcurrent technology to enhance healing and recovery in even the most severely injured horses.

“We are delighted to be working with Richard in such an important year for British equestrianism, as his impeccable management of his competition horses enables him to provide valuable and very professional input into our growing database of knowledge.”

Find out more online at www.arcequine.com join the facebook community and follow @ArcEquine on Twitter.

Image courtesy of Jo Prestwich. All rights reserved.

Stanley-Giraffe is 'raring to go - and feeling great'!

Eaimbry Endeavour and Elli Darling

Elli Darling’s background in eventing ensures that she still enjoys jumping, but the Suffolk-based rider and trainer now specialises in dressage and last year, when her parents bought the then five-year-old Eaimbry Endeavour to join the other nine horses on the yard she shares with her partner Tori Bahal, it was the realisation of an ambition born a year earlier.

Standing 16.3hh, the San Amour gelding Eaimbry Endeavour is known affectionately as ‘Stanley-Giraffe’ and Ellie says: “We first saw him as a four-year-old and managed to buy him a year later. We did the five-year-old classes, but he was sharp and quite naughty – you could be riding along quite nicely and then all of a sudden, be facing the other way without having time to work out how you got there!
“I did a couple of novices with him at the end of last season and he came out this spring to do the six-year-old classes. He felt amazing, we had the changes sorted and were aiming for advanced medium, but then he went lame in April.

Heading for advanced medium at the start of the season.

“It started with him feeling a bit ‘iffy’ for a week, being really argumentative and difficult, yet when we went to a show at the end of that week, he was brilliant. After a day off though, he just didn’t feel right and when I went into trot, he was very wrong – and our vet duly found a shadow on a scan indicating he had injured a front suspensory ligament.
“Nerve blocking proved this was the problem, but although the shadow was tiny, the severity of his lameness had the vet worried about the true extent of the injury. 

He told me it may not repair fully, as Stanley has an extremely athletic action in trot and doesn’t know what ‘half power’ is, so it was going to be difficult to keep him sane during rehabilitation.
“Not only that, but he is too sharp to hack because he’s terrified of traffic, including bicycles. So although he’s not spooky or tense in the way most riders would understand, he uses any excuse to have a ‘hooley’. He doesn’t ‘wind up’ but does whip round – and round – and round – and if he changes direction, it can be a bit unseating. I knew that if we couldn’t rehabilitate him successfully, he didn’t really have a future as he obviously couldn’t go jumping either and he would never be someone’s hack!

“He was put on strict box rest and it was at that stage one of my clients suggested I look at the ArcEquine. I hadn’t heard of it at that point, but she persuaded me to ring the company and I duly did. That conversation, and the fact that I felt I had nothing to lose, resulted in my decision to give it a go – and so far – brilliant!
“The vet has just been out again and on this latest scan, the leg looks normal again and Stanley is feeling great. I adore the horse and so I’m still taking it so, so slowly. We’ve progressed to trotting and are looking at more weeks of trot work, steadily introducing lateral work, before we canter. He still loves to play about, but he never tries to really get me off and knowing him so well helps me to keep things going in the right direction.

“I’m obviously delighted with the result we’ve seen and I now use the ArcEquine for maintenance on the other horses too. I’ve never tried it on myself yet, because it’s either on a horse or on charge. Maybe we need another one!”

Images courtesy of Ana Goodrum, White Cat Photography. www.white-catphotography.com