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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 22, 2005
MEDIA CONTACT:
Jan Mansfield
januscom@shaw.ca
604-719-3828
TRAINER’S CHALLENGE – DAY 2
The competition began heating up Saturday in the Trainer’s Challenge with Chris Irwin, Doug Mills and Jay O’Jay each conducting two training sessions and making significant progress with the two-year-old colts they were only introduced to the previous day. By the end of their third sessions all three had saddled and mounted the three young Quarter Horses brought in from the range by Douglas Lake Cattle Company of Merritt, BC.
Mills, who had Tip Top Thibedaux walking over trot poles, concluded his last session with 18 minutes to spare, satisfied he had done enough with his horse in preparation for the final showdown Sunday. “I knew after this morning’s session that I could really go with him today,” said Mills. “The sky is the limit where I’ve got him now without any pressure. I’m just going to kind of do what I have to do to win the Challenge and then go from there.”
O’Jay also rode his horse, He Isa Pecos Badger, around the round pen and concluded the session by picking up his hooves and then proceed to have the young horse yawn and nod his head. “I think it’s so important to have fun with your horse,” O’Jay said later. “Serious fun, I call it. We have to be serious about what we’re doing, but let’s have some fun while we’re doing it.”
Tamarack Sun, the horse that Irwin drew to work with, appears to be the most sensitive of the three young horses who are all sired by Fritzi Badger. “He’s pretty delicate, and the most explosive of the three,” said Irwin, who donned a riding helmet before mounting him for the first time. Irwin said although he only got a couple of steps out of to the left before he ran out of time, he spent a lot of time getting him to put his head in his hands. “I took the time to do that, hoping it will pay off. And I think it is,” he said. “He’s about where I expected he would be and I just can’t push him any faster. This environment is so stressful for all of us. It wouldn’t be fair, it wouldn’t be empathetic and it wouldn’t be in his best interest or mine to push him any faster or any harder. So let the chips fall where they may.”
Irwin admitted to feeling the stress of the Challenge. “It’s performance stress, along with danger stress, along with competitive stress,” he said. “All you can do is not allow that stress to come out through aggressive body language.
The Trainer’s Challenge has drawn standing room only crowds for all the sessions, and the insightful and often humorous comments offered by Hugh McLennan, well known trainer, cowboy and voice of the weekly radio program, Spirit of the West, has added to the audience experience. Judging the event are well known course designer, coach and English judge Pamela Arthur, veterinarian and horseman Dr. John Doug Gilray and Doug Henry, who has been a trainer for 45 years and a top AQHA competitor.
Arthur said she has been impressed with the content of the training that has been delivered to the audience, and that it has been done in language that is useful to all horsemen, western and English alike. ”I’m especially watching for what the audience can pick up from the trainers explanations.” That is one of the components of the judging criteria.
Dr. Gilray said that since the trainers are coming from different philosophies and positions, the judges are having some difficulty in assessing their results. However, he said that he himself has learned from the sessions. “I’ve been around horses all my life and yet these are three guys that have had a tremendous amount of experience and they all have something to add.”
“Things are heating up in the Challenge,” observed Henry Saturday afternoon. “It’s going to be an interesting competition before it’s completed. They’re doing a good job with those babies. It’s a lot to get done with a two-year-old.
After another training session in the round pen Sunday, the Trainer’s Challenge will take to the main arena for the Finals, after which a winner will be declared.
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