Three strides to a skinny vertical: a rider's notebook

The first time I really looked at a three-stride combination with a skinny vertical at the end of it, my stomach did that familiar flip. Anyone who eventers in Australia knows the feeling. You walk the course at a venue like Boneo Park or the Gawler event grounds and suddenly there it is, tucked in a corner where you cannot run fast or escape. A short related distance with a plain rail up front and a narrow vertical at the out, waiting to punish a mistake.

A combination, or combo as most riders call it in the warm-up, asks the horse to think. A three-stride line gives you a little room to fix things, but not much. By the time you have sorted your pace, you have already taken a stride. A vertical that sits skinny on the opposite side of the line waits like a polite but firm teacher.

I had been working toward this for a few months with Archie. The decision to enter the class happened almost casually, over a coffee with my coach at a Melbourne-area agistment property, but the build-up was anything but. This is a personal account of one specific ride, one related distance, and one skinny that I keep coming back to whenever I school a course.

Australian eventing brings its own flavour to jumping training. The courses tend to feel open because venues have plenty of room, but the weather can undo a plan in a heartbeat. A sudden southerly on a January day, dust blowing across the arena, the sun cracking the back of your neck. You ride through all of that. So when I say I learned a few things from this one ride, I mean I learned them in the Australian way, slowly, with sweat, and usually with a long drive afterwards.

Walking the course the night before

Walking a course properly is half the ride and often more. The night before this particular class, I wandered the arena at Boneo with a measuring tape, a course plan pulled from the EA portal, and the particular kind of tired you only get after a day spent travelling. The drive from where I keep Archie down to the peninsula is a few hours on its own, and that kind of travel makes you extra careful during the walk. You measure twice, three times if you have to.

The combo sat on a slight bend after a related distance from a vertical I had schooled plenty at home. Three strides on the plan, which translated to roughly twenty-four metres between the elements once I had stepped it out. The front rail looked inviting enough, planks stacked two high, no groundline visible from the angle I would jump it. The back element, though, was the skinny. White poles, narrow in the way that white poles tend to be, no forgiving fill behind them. If my line drifted left coming out of the front element, the back rail would catch a shoulder.

My coach, who learned her trade riding eventers through the Hunter Valley in the nineties, told me years ago to trust my eye and ignore the printed number when I could. So I counted off the distance by walking it. Three even strides. Three. I marked each take-off point with a small pile of sawdust I had brought in the ute, partly to be tidy and partly because the Aussie sun has a habit of shifting things in your mind after a long day.

That night I did what most riders in my circle do after a course walk. I sat in the cabin of the truck with the windows down and wrote down what I planned to ride. The first element forward, keep the rhythm, three good strides, then straight to the skinny with no last-minute decisions. No drama, just the plan.

Schooling the related distance at home

Schooling a combination at home is the unglamorous part of the sport. No ribbon, no judge scribbling notes, just you and a horse figuring out how to count together. For this ride, I built a small related distance in the indoor arena using a single rail and a small vertical, then spaced them out by a few metres and worked on finding the rhythm without staring at the distance.

The three-stride line is forgiving in the sense that you have one whole stride to fix a miscount. A one-stride, by contrast, is brutally honest. Three strides gives you the luxury of a small adjustment mid-line, but only if you know you have made it. I schooled it both on the right rein and the left, watched Archie take a slightly long first stride when I landed a touch deep, and corrected with my leg before the second. He is a horse who likes a clear question, and the three-stride line asks a very clear question: can you organise your canter while keeping your eye ahead.

One afternoon, after the temperature had eased off a bit and the flies had finally backed off, I set the distance up with the skinny element in the form of a narrow filler I had borrowed from a friend who eventers out near Scone. Even at home, a narrow object up close forces you to ride forward. Archie knows the difference between a wide oxer he can flatten over and a rail he needs to step across. That step-across is exactly what the skinny vertical demands in competition. He learned it in about twenty minutes, which is faster than I expected and slower than I had hoped.

I rode the line twenty-odd times over two weeks. Some days it felt like progress. Some days it felt like an argument between two stubborn beings, me and a grey horse who would rather graze on the agistment than jump another bloody combination. We took days off. We went for long walks along the river flats. We came back fresh.

Finding three even strides

The day of the class broke early and warm, the way summer in southern Australia often does. I had arrived the afternoon before, set up the float near the stables, and done my best to settle Archie in the warm, dry air. He ate his hard feed and drank like he meant it, which is always a good sign.

In the warm-up, I focused on one thing: the quality of his canter before the line. If the canter is adjustable, the three strides look after themselves. If the canter is rushed, they get away from you. I worked on lengthening and shortening without changing the tempo, the sort of work you only really need when a combination is in front of you.

The line itself, in the main arena, sat with the front rail facing a long side of the ring, which gave me a generous approach. I came in a touch long on the first element, not so long that I lost the line, but enough to make me really ride the three strides forward. Archie listened, picked up his first stride a bit boldly, and shortened into the second and third. Three even steps, the way it ought to be. By the time we landed off the front rail, the canter was reorganised and I could see the skinny cleanly.

I had read somewhere, probably in an old EFA coaching manual, that the rider's job in a three-stride line is to keep the canter, not to find the stride. That is the truth of it. You do not chase the perfect take-off point on the back element. You ride the rhythm forward and trust the distance. When I let the rhythm lead, the count took care of itself.

The skinny vertical and rider confidence

The skinny vertical is the kind of fence that punishes doubt and rewards commitment. There is no use in riding it soft. You either send the horse at it like you mean it, or you do not send him at all. I have watched plenty of riders, including myself on a few ugly days, half-try a skinny and watch the pole fall.

This time, I committed. The line ahead was straight, the canter was uphill, Archie was listening, and I had my eyes up. I let the line come to me and held a half-seat through the third stride. The rail went by under his knees, the kind of neat clearance you only appreciate in hindsight, and we landed in a tidy canter on the other side. The skinny was behind us. The class was not over, but the part I had been quietly worrying about for a fortnight was finished.

Looking back, I think the skinny taught me something simple. It rewarded the work I had done at home, the boring schooling, the long drives, the patience of my coach. It also reminded me that confidence in this sport is built in tiny moments. A single fence, well ridden, adds to the bank. A single fence, badly ridden, draws from it. I would rather add to the bank.

There is a particular kind of tired you feel after a class like this, the kind that has nothing to do with the horse. It is the tiredness of having ridden every fence like it mattered. Archie got a long hose down, a feed, and a small celebration treat. I sat on the tailgate of the ute with a bottle of water and watched the next class warm up. There is always another round.

What I took away from the round

A few weeks on, the skinny is still vivid in my memory. The line, the canter, the way Archie's head dropped a touch as he figured out the question. I have schooled it again at home and it has gone both well and badly since, which is the honest truth of riding these things.

What I took away from that day was not a single piece of advice but a small bundle of habits. Walk the course until you trust your eye. Build the line at home until your horse believes in the rhythm. Ride the canter, not the distance. And send the skinny with commitment or do not send it at all. None of those ideas are new. Plenty of good riders in Australia and beyond have said them in slightly different words. The trick is doing them properly, on a tired day, with a horse who has his own ideas.

Eventing is a long sport. There will be other combinations, other skinnies, other long drives. There will be classes where the rhythm falls apart and fences come down. There will be others where everything clicks and you remember why you got into this in the first place. This particular class sat closer to the second kind than the first, and I am grateful for that.

I will keep riding these lines at home, school them on both reins, and keep measuring three strides until they feel like breathing. That is the work, and the work is the point.