Horse Network

09/09/2025

Loved this series. ❤

In 2016 I had the great privilege of being selected to ride on the Rio Olympic team. I spent a large part of that summer in Europe training with the Canadian team and during that time Eric Lamaze and Tiffany Foster introduced me to a handsome bay horse that would become one of my best […]

09/09/2025

Bringing new meaning to the term, "baby on board." 🍼

Last spring, an Australian study found that growing a human baby in utero requires significantly more energy than previously thought: Some 50,000 calories over nine months—about the equivalent of 50 pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.  That’s a lot of caloric work, Chunky Monkey notwithstand...

09/09/2025

Horse Bytes is back! Now as a podcast. Join Olympian Dani Waldman and superfan Sadhbh P (pronounced: SIGH-ve) as they deep dive on the $5 Million Rolex Grand Prix, analyze the field for the BMO Nations Cup, and more at the Spruce Meadows Masters. Is the GP the only class that matters? Where did it go wrong for Martin Fuchs? Will there EVER be another Grand Slam winner? Listen in to find out!

09/08/2025

In Brash we believe.

“Why’s he going so slow?” says the person next to me. It comes out almost like a groan. “He knows he needs to get a clear,” I reply, and something blooms inside my brain, a revelation. Strategy. Brilliant, and shining like a diamond. Imagine, a rider on a thousand-pound-plus animal, adrena...

09/08/2025

Setting records and taking names at Defender Burghley Horse Trials.

If you were spinning an epic tale about the sport of eventing, you might start with an on-the-nose name for your protagonist like “Canter” and build your story arc around any number of plot lines. Defending champion overcomes mentally challenging circumstances to reclaim title. Champion horse an...

09/07/2025

"Amazing, absolutely amazing. He just tries his hardest. He loves these big competitions. Sometimes he's a little bit on edge in the stables and things like that, but the moment I put my foot in the stirrup Walter relaxes and it's where he wants to be, so from that point of view, I couldn't be luckier. But equally that comes with a fair amount of pressure. Someone said to me earlier, does it get easier because you know you're on such a great horse? And the answer is no, it probably gets harder."
—Ros Canter on Lorships Graffalo after defending their title to win Burghley Horse Trials for the second year in a row. While pregnant with her second child.

📷 Helen Revington

09/07/2025

“Richard Vogel and Cloudio entered the ring for the first time that day.

It was the second round of the BMO Nations Cup at Spruce Meadows and the German Team had dominated the first, performing like machines with three clear rounds from Christian Kukuk, Sophie Hinners, and Daniel Deusser. No other team had performed so faultlessly, not even Team Great Britain, who sat atop the leaderboard after round one, only because of the blessing of the drop score, which had eliminated the 8-fault round by their first-to-go rider.

Team Germany had no need of a drop score. Instead, Vogel elected to save his horse any unnecessary exertion and lead him fresh into round two.

But it was a risk. To learn the course, to know the course, to return to the ring more knowledgable—that is the advantage gained with a second round. That advantage put against performing with a horse that is perhaps more fatigued, less fresh.

And Spruce Meadows, with its vast grass ring, its large jumps with long, heavy poles, is an easy place for a horse to feel fatigued…”

Read Erica Hatfield’s full report on the BMO Nations Cup on HorseNetwork.com.

📷 Spruce Meadows Media / Mike Sturk

09/07/2025

"So here we are. Give us a clear round and you’ve won the day. And he does. And she does it. And they do it!"

Richard Vogel and Cloudio entered the ring for the first time that day. It was the second round of the BMO Nations Cup at Spruce Meadows and the German Team had dominated the first, performing like machines with three clear rounds from Christian Kukuk, Sophie Hinners, and Daniel Deusser. No other te...

09/06/2025

"It's a big deal coming here in my situation. There was a lot at stake today and I wanted to be here. There was never any doubt about that. But the reality is all eyes were on me today, quite rightly so, and, yeah, I did definitely have a little jump this morning quietly for my benefit, not for Walter's, just to make sure that my tummy muscles and everything were functioning well and my mental state was in a good enough place to go out the start box. But the moment I had a jump on Walter this morning I knew that it was all systems going."
—Ros Canter, defending champion at Burghley Horse Trials, after taking over the lead on Lordships Graffalo. Canter and the 13-year-old SHBGB gelding have won three of their past four FEI starts, two at the 5* level. She's currently pregnant with her second child.

📷 Helen Revington

09/06/2025

“Your emotional credits take hours, days, weeks, years to get. You can take those away [with the wrong bit]. In an instant.”

Mette Larsen talks about most common bit fitting mistakes, what to understand about the horse’s mouth, and improving horse welfare through innovative bitting solutions on this episode of . Listen in!

This episode of Horse Person is made possible by Nikovian. Use code horseperson15 at checkout for 15% off. Bits are among the most commonly used tools in riding, but how often do we stop to consider if we’re using the right one? According to Mette Larsen, president of Noya Shula USA and a leading ...

09/05/2025

"I was happy with her, and she's still relatively babyish in some ways. She's obviously out of a proper racehorse, and at times she's more like a racehorse than an eventhorse. She's very easy to become excitable. On the whole, she did very well. We could have probably had her a little bit quieter, perhaps a bit more work, but once we're up and in the more open work, I thought that's where she started to breathe, and I think she progressed as the test went on. I felt like she let me in a lot more as we got further on through the test. You can only ride what you have underneath you. I felt like I was brave enough that once she'd had her first spook, I sort of put my hands down and forward and said, go, and she responded very well."
—Oliver Townend and Cooley Rosalent took over the overnight lead at Defender Burghley Horse Trials after dressage with a career best score of 22.

📷 Helen Revington