Linzi's blog

That is the question. Do I go to Hickstead this weekend, or stay at home and sulk?
Mum has said that, since Dad has a cold, I can't go to Hickstead, because she doesn't want him going all the way down there and back on Sunday. I really want to go, because a certain person is going to be there that I want to see. To get me to change my mind, Mum is offering to pay for me to go to Olympia for a coupld of days near Christmas. For the uninitiated, Olympia is an important horse show held every year in London in December. Now, I would love tickets to go there for a couple of days, except for the fact that a certain person isn't definately going to be at Olympia. So, personally, I'd prefer to go to Hickstead while I know that this certain person is going to be there.
Please help me make some sense of whether or not I should just go to Hickstead!

Not well again. Got up this morning feeling very icky. Not the best way to prepare for a trip to Hickstead next week, because I know now that I won't be feeling well all next week either. Every time I plan a trip or holiday (apart from the Infusion test) I can guarantee that in the week leading upto it, I won't be feeling well.
As any of you who have read my blog from the start will know, when I get ill, I get mean. So, for those who want to know who I am in love with, here is the answer:-

Read more!

Right, this is very simple. If anyone wants to desperately know who I am in love with, picture and name. You need to leave a comment. If I get more than 3 comments, I will reveal all.
See? Told you it was simple.

Late Night Nicksy is ending! This is the worst news ever!

Yes, to some people, who presents the Late Night show on Key 103 might not be vitally important, but to me it is up there with whether or not Gigolo was better than Bonfire at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. Yes, that important.

Manchester needs Nicksy like I need a training session with Ulli Kasselmann. (Yes, I need a training session with that guy more than you would think.)

I can not imagine life without this show. 8 days from now I will be facing just that. Unimaginable. At this rate I will do anything to go to Germany (within reason of course), because I am not exactly that keen on the replacements lined up - Macdonald and Maguire. I suppose i will just have to listen and see if they are any good or not. If they are rubbish, stand by for numerous posts on just how much better Nicksy is than them.

Ok, little rant for the night over with, back to my life's love, dressage. Yes, I know you probably thought that I was going to say who I am in love with or post a photo of him, but that might come later tonight. I have decided to send a nice letter off to Ulli Kasselmann about my training and hope for the best.

Anyone who has visited my profile will know that one of the things I would most love in the world would be a dressage or showjumping training session in Germany. If you have read my blog for any length of time, you will also know that I really lack the confidence needed to ask anyone like Paul Schokemohle or Ullrich Kasselmann for even a riding lesson.
The problem I have is that, I really, really want to be able to make the British dressage team at some point. the only way I am going to be able to do this at the moment, is to ask the likes of Ullrich Kasselmann for a training session. I have been on his website, thinking that I would just get the address and write a nice letter outlining my problem. Apparantly, I can't do that. I have to phone this person who sorts the training stuff out. That means I have to actually speak to someone albeit on the phone, but that's bad enough.
What I want to know is, should I just write a letter to Herr Kasselmann anyway and hope for the best?

I was musing on the resposibility for the extreme form of rollkur or the training method of choice for todays aspiring young dressage rider. I think the point I am trying to make is that, similar to any sport if you see someone doing something and getting results because of it, you want to copy it. So, we have a German showjumping rider who sees someone using a new stretching exercise on their horse in the warm-up. That someone then goes out and wins the class. "Aha, I need to use that exercise on my horses to get better results." the rider thinks to themselves and so they go away and perfect this new training method. This gets passed around and soon pretty much everyone is using the exercise and getting better results. The inventor of the exercise doesn't like this much and so looks at improving it. He asks the horse to bend more with it's neck, rounding it and tucking it's chin in. As a result his horse gets even better. This new method starts being copied by everyone and so the exercise evolves in rollkur (hyperflexion, round and deep). A German dressage trainer sees the showjumping riders using this exercise and notes how well their horses are going on the flat as a result of it. He goes away, studies the exercise in detail, the mechanics of it and how to ask the horse to do the exercise correctly. He then passes this onto his riders, who start using the showjumping exercise on their horses in training. Their results in the arena improve as a result.
You know what happens then. Another dressage rider sees this exercise and starts to copy it. Then their trainer thinks "If we ask the horse to stretch more in their neck, so that the chin is almost touching the chest, and keep the position for longer, then surely that will be even better for the horse." So that's what they do and thus the modern, extreme form of rollkur is born.
So is it the fault of the rider who originally came up with a new stretching exercise, or the trainer who developed it further?

No I am not kidding you. 600,000 Euros is the sum that someone paid to Performance Sales International last December for a 4 year old horse.
When I read that, it got me thinking a bit about taking the horse on from a riders perspective. What I mean is, if someone came upto me and said "Right, I've got a great horse here, he's 4 years old, a dead cert to be a future champion in dressage/showjumping and I want you to ride him. Oh yes, by the way, he cost me 600,000 Euros." I am not sure that I would be able to cope with the pressure of then bringing that horse on to the very top level it could reach in it's career. I would be scared stiff of injuring it in training. OK, so the price of the horse isn't going to affect the vet's bill, but, as an owner, the last thing you want when you have just spent that sort of money, is the horse to get an injury. No, as an owner who has just spent the price of a fair-sized house on this little, olympic prospect, you want it out there competing, starting to earn some of the initial outlay back. in this case, the owner may never actually make a profit on the horse, because it's a gelding, so there's nothing coming in on the breeding side. Actually, it's probably for the best that it IS a gelding - can you imagine what it would have cost if it had been a stallion?