RIDER GEMMA STEVENS
“I STARTED riding ‘Casper’ at the end of his eight-year-old year. He’d done plenty of three-stars with his previous rider Liz Halliday-Sharp and gone very well, but he’d had a patchy four-star start with a couple of falls.
“I felt like it was important for us to establish ourselves as a partnership before moving up to four-star, so I spent the first year being very careful, doing intermediates and three-stars and making sure he was super confident.
“He used to be a little worried about jumping a ditch, so I spent a long time gaining his confidence with that and getting to the point where he wasn’t holding his breath.
“At the end of that year we stepped up to four-star, then last season was about consolidation and he was fantastic. The only blot on his record was when I made a mistake at Bramham so I walked home as I didn’t see the point in going all the way round after I’d made an error at fence four.
This story is from the June 15, 2023 edition of Horse & Hound.
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This story is from the June 15, 2023 edition of Horse & Hound.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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