Cob Jockey

I know you've felt it.  That need, your mind and body awash with unrequited desire.  Feeling the rush of pleasure as you read endless forums, secretly watch videos and keep a hidden picture collection, all in a vain attempt to substitute for the real thing.  Nothing will satisfy it, nothing except getting your legs around...the barrel of a horse.

What kind of a blog did you think this was, anyway?

I'm looking for ponies here, probably.

By my second month in Italy (this was before Fiera Cavalli), the desire to ride was so strong that it was keeping me from living a normal, healthy study abroad life.  I would squeal walking by carriage horses and gush to my non-horsey roommates about their tack, shoes and conformation.  I would spend entire evenings on COTH and Dreamhorse instead of wandering the city like I should have been.  It got so bad that my non-horsey roommate actually called me out on it, and took me on a vacation to an agritourismo in the south of Italy, vicino Napoli.

...which is how I found myself on the single scariest horse ride of my life.  Scarier than being run off with by a dead-fit racehorse, scarier than jumping a fast, green horse when I was green myself, scarier than my first (and last) collegiate IHSA fences round.

Our lunch table.  The white/blue haze in the background is the ocean.

As we were eating lunch at a tiny restaurant overlooking the Mediterranean, I began chatting up our waiter.  Since it only took me about four seconds to disclose that I was a horse-deprived American to everyone I met, he immediately told me about his uncle's riding stable down the road, and that he'd make us a reservation for the ride that was leaving in just a half hour.  I would have been skeptical, but for the degree of my equine desperation.

...And that's how I found myself facing a tiny, scraggly little bay with the bit set way too low in his mouth, heading straight up what felt like a 45 degree asphalt road headed up a rocky mountain.  From what I could tell, these horses spent all day standing tacked and tied to a hitching post, waiting on enough tourists to come by to warrant a ride.  (This is not a tourist area by any means.)  I didn't have the language skills to discuss farrier care, deworming and proper tack adjustment, but even if I had had the language at that point, I probably wouldn't have brought it up out of not wanting to be "that American."  I can recognize a futile effort when I see one.

My other companions, one of which was a blonde in 4" stilettos, were on similarly equipped animals.  About five minutes into the ride, that blonde decided she couldn't handle her horse, a Thoroughbred mare with both front feet so clubbed, it looked like she would knuckle over at any second, so Stiletto Blonde rode double on her boyfriend's horse while Clubby alternated between following and leading, loose, still fully tacked, the entire rest of the ride.

This is not the exact scene I looked down on, but it's from the same		trip.

I have flashes of memories from that ride - going up and letting my little bay pick his way gingery around the Mediterranean mountain rock and shrubs, going down that steep asphalt and being terrified that Clubby would lose her balance and roll face first down the mountain, ripping my pants on a nail sticking out of a fence post in a vineyard - but there's one memory that almost erases all the bad for me.



We finally made it to the top of the rocky mountain, and there we stood in silence on our horses for a moment, taking in what was around us.  From the beige rocky crag, interspersed with green-grey shrubs, we looked out on the endless, blue Mediterranean sea, until the horizon where it met the bright blue sky.  It was hundreds of meters below us, but that only added to the charm.  There I was, sitting on a real live horse in the most beautiful setting I'd ever ridden in.  For a moment, I forgot about the terrifying ride up.

...but then we had to go back down.

After a four hour train and bus ride from my cozy apartment in downtown Florence, Italy, I arrived at the gates of Fiera Cavalli 2008, the annual horse fair and expo held in Verona, Italy.  I was alone, hundreds of kilometers from anything familiar, and still only about an intermediate Italian speaker, but I was fearless and my eyes were surely shining as I walked underneath the banner you see at the right.  Up to that point, it had been a long, primarily horseless semester of study abroad, but a chance sighting of an ad in a magazine I had purchased in a train station a month earlier had led me to this, the mecca of equine sport in Italy.

The fair itself was impressive, and I got a quick education that things at the top levels of Italian sport are not as they are here in the US.  I saw everything from red alligator skin boots, to helmets that looked like a science fiction creation, to pitiful attempts to recreate American western wear.  But that wasn't why I was there.  I was there to see the FEI World Cup Show Jumping Qualifier.

Vintage Texas originals!  Somehow, I doubt that.

'Merica.

So many cute old guys on gorgeous horses.  I cannot overstate this Italian phenomenon.

I settled into my seat in time to catch the second half of the Prestige class, which occurred right before the FEI class, and it was during that class that I saw the most stunning display of horsemanship I've seen in my life, before and since. 

Ludger and his young horse in the Prestige class.

All of the competitors were going lights out in the class with the intention of winning it, but it was clear that that wasn't Ludger Beerbaum's intention from the moment he and his flashy young Chestnut walked into the ring.  Where others had been taking sharp rollbacks and galloping, he took the course slowly and methodically, clearly only intending to use this as a chance to give this young horse a low-pressure introduction to a big show ring atmosphere.  As he went around the course, you could see him holding this young horse's mind in his hands, shaping a confident future competitor as he guided him and picked him up after he made young horse mistakes.  That ride taught me so much about creating an independent, confident equine partner.

Ludger Beerbaum, in the FEI class.

Then for the FEI class, I'm pretty sure my jaw never left the floor.  I'd never seen a horse jump that high before in real life, and it felt like it almost defied physics that they could get that high off the ground and come back down safely.  Competitor after competitor went until we had a jump-off of three, one of whom was the hometown hero (and I'm so sorry, I can't remember his name.)


What happened next, during the jump-off, I'm still a little embarrassed about to this day.

The winner...oops...

The hometown hero, (whose name I still cannot remember, I apologize) was the second to go in the jump-off.  The first competitor had had a rail, so he needed to go clear.  He had a breathtaking ride, both full of passion and technically correct.  When he was finished, my section began cheering loudly  (these are Italians, after all, they don't do anything quietly!) and suddenly I realized that we were the only ones cheering and the rest of the stands were groaning.  My section wondered, what had happened?  Then I moved to my left and realized that the actual final jump was set up in such a way that it was behind a metal support beam and impossible for my section to have seen or realized.  It's quite likely that our cheering at the second to last fence caused him and his horse to lose concentration and take a rail on the last fence.  The third rider ended up going clear and winning the competition.

It was only one of three horse experiences I had in Italy, but the mark it left on my equestrian personality is the most indelible.  There is no forgetting an experience like Fiera Cavalli and the FEI Verona World Cup Qualifier.