Phillip Dutton - Modern Eventing with Phillip Dutton: The Complete Resource: Training, Conditioning, and Competing in All Three Phases

First published in 2013 by

Trafalgar Square Books

North Pomfret, Vermont 05053

Printed in China

Copyright 2013 Phillip Dutton

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, by any means, without written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer quoting brief excerpts for a review in a magazine, newspaper, or website.

Disclaimer of Liability

The authors and publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book. While the book is as accurate as the authors can make it, there may be errors, omissions, and inaccuracies.

Trafalgar Square Books encourages the use of approved safety helmets in all equestrian sports and activities.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dutton, Phillip, 1963

Modern eventing with Phillip Dutton : the complete resourcetraining, conditioning, and competing in all three phases / Phillip Dutton with Amber Heintzberger.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-57076-489-9 (hardback)

1. Eventing (Horsemanship)--Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Heintzberger, Amber. II. Title.

SF295.7.D88 2013

798.242--dc23

2012049868

All photographs by Amber Heintzberger except 4.1 D by Hannah Bennett and 3.2 A-C courtesy of RZ Dutton Saddles

Book design and diagrams by Lauryl Eddlemon

Cover design by RM Didier

Typefaces: Poppl-Pontifex, Myriad

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my parents, Peter and Mary Dutton. I was fortunate to grow up with their love and support, which gave me the strength and confidence to leave our farm in the Outback of Australia to pursue my sport and my passion.

Index

I t is a great pleasure to write a foreword for Phillips book, Modern Eventing. I first met Phillip some 25 years ago when he came to a clinic in Sydney, Australia. He was already an accomplished horseman, coming from an Outback farming community. I was impressed by the quiet, confident way that he rode and managed his horses.

Some time after this Phillip moved to the United States, and his success there has been truly inspiring. We joined forces at major events in Europe while I was Coach of the Australian Eventing Team, and we formed a great coach/ pupil relationship, as well as being good friends.

One of my fondest memories was riding and galloping horses with Phillip, leading into the Atlanta Games, on the beautiful hills overlooking his and Evies property at True Prospect Farm in Pennsylvania. The Australian team won the gold medal and Phillips team spirit, help, and advice, as well as his performance on his great horse True Blue Girdwood, was instrumental in the team winning by an extraordinary 60 points.

Phillip came back to Australia some months before the Sydney Olympic Games with his two horses, Show of Heart and House Doctor. He stayed at my property at Mt. White and we had the best time, training and just working out how to get the best out of the horses. As always, we worked well together, and I continued to be impressed by Phillips knowledge and skill.

This was followed by his selection to the Australian Team and a wonderful performance to win team gold on his very young horse, House Doctor.

This book reflects on a truly amazing horseman, coach, husband, father, and most of all, to me, a great friend.

Wayne Roycroft

Australian Olympic Medalist and Team Coach

F or those of you who dont already know, Phillip Dutton was born and raised in a small, country town called Nyngan in Australia. There are no coaches or riding instructors within two hours drive from there, there are simply people called horsemen. Phillips early training and understanding in the art of horses was not your typical, structured, riding-school education, but about working with horses to do what you needed to do. He has learned the hard way that you cannot tell the horse what to do, but must make him want to do what you ask of him.

In 2006 I was privileged and honored to meet Phillip while I prepared my horse Ying Yang Yo for the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event. After watching Ying Yang jump a few fences, he knew what type of horse he was, the exercises that would improve him, and he knew how hard he could test and challenge the rider. I was blown away every day by the number of exercises he had up his sleeve to teach and train all types of horses to become successful eventers. He was so brilliant in the way he did this and I knew that I had to change my career path and take the opportunity to learn more from this great horseman if I was to become all I had dreamed I could be.

I quickly abandoned my native Australia and became a working pupil/assistant trainer for Phillip for the next three years. The thousands of hours I was lucky enough to spend observing him and his horses was life-changing. You could never put a price on it. While he is a man of few words, he speaks a thousand words through feel to every horse he sits on. On a day-to-day basis Phillip is dealing with horses of every levelfrom three-year-olds getting broken in and four-year-olds starting their first event, right up to preparing horses for the Olympic Games.

The first ten years of my career in Australia I spent trying to get myself onto an Australian team, with no success. Either my horses did not perform well at the correct event, or they were unsound at the most critical moment. Within two years of studying with Phillip I tasted my first team experience, riding Neville Bardos at the 2010 World Equestrian Games in Lexington, Kentucky. Two years later I experienced my first Olympics with Otis Barbotiere riding for the United States (along with Phillip) in London. Without question both team representations were thanks to the guidance of Phillip every step of the way, and not only did he train me to be selected for the US Team, I was riding with him as a teammate in both instances.

The most extraordinary thing about Phillip is that he could take you on a course walk or on a training session and tell you precisely how your horse would react. This is the brilliance of Phillip and his decades of experience with every type of horse put on the planet. Now that Im off on my own, running my own business, I often get cornered by a challenge with a particular horse. I stop and ask myself, What would Phillip do?

For a very quiet and humble person, Phillip Dutton has had an enormous impact on producing the best event riders in America, without question. If you look at the top 50 riders in this country at any point in the last ten years, the majority of them have been influenced by the greatest trainer this country has ever seen. No one has matched in American history the number of advanced horses produced by Phillip and no one has come close to his record of USEA Rider of the Year twelve times.

In 2011 whilst renting the upper barn at Phillips training facility in Pennsylvania the unthinkable happened when an electrical fire completely destroyed the barn. As much media hype and recognition as I received for pulling my horse Neville out of the burning barn, at the end of the night, the true unsung hero was Phillip Dutton. He arrived at the fire and went in on his own to search for horses. He was solely responsible for retrieving Caitlin Sillimans mare Catch A Star from the barn, guiding her down the blazing aisle to safety. Catch A Star had third-degree burns over 70 percent of her skin, which shows the immense danger Phillip put himself in to retrieve this magnificent mare. If that wasnt enough, once again unprompted, he chased me into the barn and allowed me an extra set of hands to retrieve Neville from the inferno. As always he showed unselfishness helping get Neville out of the barn, never thinking twice about the danger he put himself in.