How do you challenge athletes who have already reached the pinnacle of their sport?
That is the question asked and answered by the Rolex Grand Slam of Show Jumping, a series of four competitions modeled on the grand slam events in tennis and golf.
For riders to achieve the grand slam title, they must win three of these grand prix events in a row — a feat that has been achieved only once, by the Scottish show jumper Scott Brash, who won the C.H.I. Geneva, the C.H.I.O. Aachen in Germany and the C.S.I.O. Spruce Meadows Masters in Calgary, Alberta, in 2014 and 2015.
The grand slam grew in 2018 to include the Dutch Masters, whose grand prix will take place on Sunday.
“The best riders in the world come with their best horses,” Marcel Hunze, the director of the Dutch Masters, said in an interview last month, “so the level is really high.” Seven of the top 10 ranked riders are signed up to compete in the grand prix, event organizers said.
That means the course set for them must be an incredible challenge. If the horse and rider are communicating well, it should look easy, Louis Konickx, the course designer for the competition, said in an interview last month, “but it is definitely not.”
The jumps rise to 1.6 meters, or about 5¼ feet, Konickx said. He increases the difficulty by varying the distances between the jumps, meaning riders need to slow their horses down or speed them up to take off from the correct position.
A good course “needs to have an intensity and dramaturgy,” he said. If Konickx does his job right, it should look as if the horse “jumps from the heart.”
Brash, 39, who has also won two team Olympic gold medals, is no stranger to difficult courses. Ten years after winning the grand slam, and before competing at the Dutch Masters this year, he reflected on his achievement.
The following interview, conducted by video, has been edited and condensed.
You are the only person to have won the grand slam. What was that like?
It’s quite hard to describe the roller coaster of emotions that you get when you win something as prestigious as that. Hello Sanctos [Brash’s horse] kicked off by winning in Geneva, and amazingly won in Aachen, and then it was all eyes on Spruce Meadows. It was just an incredible year. Sanctos is a horse of a lifetime. You know, to be able to compete in such a big outdoor arena like Aachen, as well as in an indoor arena like Geneva showed just how versatile he could be. He was just such a talented horse, and it was down to him, and we won it. I think the whole team did a fantastic job. They had him in peak condition and thankfully nothing went wrong in the buildup. They’re horses, so anything can happen right up to the last day. I think it’s probably my biggest achievement of my career, along with the Olympics.
How important is your relationship with your horse in these competitions?
I think it’s the key, your partnership with your horse. We all work every single day on the horses, and just trying to create that partnership and really understand one another. I think to be able to pull off a clear round at one of those venues and be lucky enough to win, you know, that 70 seconds in the ring is an accumulation of years and years of hard work. We travel the world, and it comes down to 70 seconds. But I think the partnership with that horse is what wins competitions. And Sanctos is so clever. I think that’s what made him such a special horse. And I think we just really understood one another. We really trust one another and have a lot of confidence in each other. So I think that’s what sort of made the difference in the end.
In that moment when you’re entering the ring, what is going through your head?
I think I can get nervous at other things, but riding in the ring is what I feel comfortable with, and knowing my horse is what I feel comfortable with. It was a long week, I remember, in Spruce Meadows. But I think leading up to it, I was just really focused on Sanctos. All day, I was just thinking about how I was going to execute our plan in the ring. And then in the ring, I’m just totally focused on trying to place Sanctos where he feels comfortable at each fence and make sure we’re in a good rhythm to try to give him the best opportunity to jump fences clear.
At the end of that round at Spruce Meadows, when you landed the final jump and then very soon found out that you won, what was that like?
I couldn’t quite believe it, such a mixture of emotions. You know, I think we’d been building up to that round for so long, since Aachen. And so all our energy and everything went into that. It was our full focus, and then to cross the finish line and realize that the dream had come true, it was incredible.
What horses will you be riding at the Dutch Masters?
I’m going to be jumping Hello Chadora Lady and also Hello Senator. They’ve just come back from Hong Kong where they both jumped really well, so they’ve just done an indoor show.
The Dutch Masters is indoors. What do you do differently riding inside versus outside?
The jumps come up very quickly indoors. It’s not always the same horse that might be great in both. But it does take a special horse to be able to jump that height fence in that sort of course. There’s not many in the world that are capable of doing it. At the Dutch Masters, the speed element will come into play. You need a horse that is quick to win one of those classes.
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