Maikel van der Vleuten NED (1ST): “It’s alway nice if there are some colleagues, like at this show here is Marc Houtzager also from The Netherlands, and he was there to help me and we could speak a little bit about the best lines to take, so he gave me the idea to go one stride less from fence one to two which worked very well. But of course the horse has to be in the right form and the right shape, and it was like that today so today was my day!”
Maikel van der Vleuten NED (1ST): I started with Verdi as a young horse, it took us quite a long time to get the right control and to get him stronger and everything and now he is so fast in a jump-off. It’s just the experience they need to get through the years, just to keep doing it every time and this is a horse that wants to do it very well, and he still wants to learn. He also likes to win and that’s very important but he also has to be happy, not every day training in the same outdoor, I try to change the work, sometimes to go outside to the woods and I use the canter track, he is more happy to train over there.
There are things to think about, for example four weeks ago in Rome I could feel he was a little bored. After the show in Calgary maybe it was a little bit too much for him so the last four weeks I got busy with making him happy and good again, and it worked out very well. He was playing with the jumps again and feeling good, and then the result comes as well!”