United States Eventing Association

John Marshall, the organizer of Fresno Horse Trials in Area VI, tells us what their program looks like in 2015, and Katie Coleman offers a natural skin remedy for horses.

Chris: This is The United States Eventing Association’s official podcast. Hello, and welcome to the program. I’m Chris Stafford. On the show this week, Katie Coleman offers us a grooming tip. First, we hear from John Marshall. John is the organizer of Fresno Horse Trials, formerly Ram Tap. He began by telling us what events they’re preparing for this spring.

John: In two weeks, we’re going to have the first show in area 6 for the year which is our combined test, which is the weekend of January the 24th and the 25th. On Monday and Tuesday, the 26th and the 27th, two-time Olympic gold medalist Mark Todd is going to give a riding clinic at the horse park. People are traveling from all over California to ride in that clinic. Three weeks after that clinic, we will have our February international horse shows, where we will run divisions from intro, up to intermediate as well as a CIC one star and a CIC two star.

Chris: Give us a picture of the venue of that John.

John: We operate at a horse park on about 150 acres. It’s on the banks of the San Joaquin River, which is one of the two biggest rivers in California. It’s next to Freeway 99, which is a freeway that runs north/south through northern California and connects other routes that connect us all over the west coast. Fresno Horse Park used to be called Ram Tap, and that’s a name that a lot of people know better than our name. It started operating in that same location in 1957. Two years ago, I took it over, and we’re trying to expand what’s there. We have, at this point, 246 temporary stalls. We have two show-jumping arenas, which we can do show jumping as well as dressage. Then we have two more that are really more versatile what we call multi-purpose arenas.

The two multi-purpose arenas we can either run short jumping, or we can run up to eight dressage courts at the same time. We’ve got the warm-up to back it up. We’ve done some de-rocking on the facility. I’ve owned it for two years. One of the things people used to kid me about is you can hear the horses riding in dressage because you can hear their feet clicking on the rocks. The rocks are not gone. We’re using them for other things.

Chris: You said coming up in two weeks time is a combined training test. That’s at all levels, isn’t it?

John: It is. It runs from intro through advanced.

Chris: What sort of interest would you expect for that John?

John: Probably somewhere around 100. Two years ago, we had 80. A year ago, we had 120. We’ll get 100. We might get 120 again. It’s always a little bit of a guess, but it’s in that range.

Chris: For horses’ fitness over there at this time of year, it wouldn’t present a problem, would it, with the weather? The climate is conducive up in Fresno. You don’t get any snow down in Fresno itself do you?

John: Correct. It’s really conducive in California. There are eight vending facilities in California, and none of them have a snow problem. There are people living in the mountains, certainly that have snow issues, but the vast majority of the riders in California really don’t have to deal with snow.

Chris: Let’s talk about the event that you’ve got coming up in a few weeks. You’ve got Mark Todd in-between time with a two-day clinic. Are you fully booked?

John: That clinic has been sold out since last month. There are 25 riders in it. You can only put so many people into those clinics and still get the rider a good quality teaching experience. It’s been sold out for a month. We’ll have a bunch of auditors. We’re very excited about him coming to Fresno.

Chris: Does he have the same 25 riders each day?

John: Yes. We’ve done a couple of these clinics. Lucinda Green came last January and did a two-day clinic. Phillip Dutton came in May of last year. Then Mary King came in November. We don’t tell them what to do, but they all seem to follow the same profile, and that is that they spend the first day working on the riders, show jumping. Then the second day, they all seem to go out on the cross-country course. They split the groups up by their riding ability and by the horse’s ability. They all seem to do that the same way. As sure as I say that, Mark will have a different method. With his riding ability and his history, boy he certainly knows what he’s doing.

Chris: Let’s talk about the event that follows then you mentioned next month.

John: As I said, it’s International Horse Trials, which is to say that we will run divisions from intro up through intermediate on a national basis. Then we also will hold a CIC one star and a two star. It’s a three-day competition. Again, people will come from all over California. We’ll get a couple people from Canada. We’ll get a couple people from Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. We get a lot of people from a long distance. We started running the CIC part of it last year. Two years ago, we had 135 entries in our competition. Last year, adding the CIC we went up to 270. My hope would be that we would get that 270 and even 300 this year. We’re having a lot of fun with it.

Jay Hambly, a Canadian course designer, went to work for me last year, and build our one star, two star and intermediate courses. They actually designed and helped build it. Bert Wood was the main builder on it. They spent several weeks with a couple of his other people last winter building those courses. We’ve gotten to try them out. They’re actually here today, starting to work on some new jumps and relocating some of the jumps. They’re changing the courses to keep them interesting and educational for the riders that will be here in February.

Chris: That’s over the middle weekend, isn’t it, 13th, through the 15 of February?

John: That’s exactly right.

Chris: Through the levels as well, isn’t it from intro all the way up to one and two star CICs?

John: It is.

Chris: What sort of numbers would you expect for that then, John based on what you’ve had in the past?

John: I think the answer is 270 to 300 entries.

Chris: Would that be your biggest event of the year then?

John: It absolutely will be.

Chris: You have more there later on in the year. Tell us what others you have scheduled through 2015.

John: We have horse trials where we will run intro through intermediate. That will be on Rolex Weekend, the last weekend in April. Then in the middle of October, we will have a horse trial where we will run intro through intermediate. Then in November, four weeks later, we will have our November horse trials, which again will run intro through intermediate.

Chris: How many events then throughout the year do you have in total?

John: In three-day eventing type of events, we have the one combined test in January, and then we have four horse trials. We’re starting to do some other things in addition to that, but those are the three-day eventing USEA-approved types of competitions.

Chris: Tell us about the sponsorship that you have. We all know that building that family of sponsors is critical to the success of an event. Also, talk about the pool of volunteers that support you as well, the kind of catchment area you have for volunteers.

John: I took this over two years ago. We are slowly adding good quality sponsors. ATF is our first presenting sponsor, and we’re very happy to have them. They’ve been very supportive. It’s a great product. It’s a win-win which is what I look for. That’s actually our biggest sponsor at this point. We are working on adding more sponsors. We have a fence sponsorship program where we’ve got a number of individuals as well as riding barns that have stepped forward and sponsored fences that ties into our fence-building program that Bert and Jay are working on. We’re expanding on that. We have a great group of volunteers. As everybody knows, three-day eventing is a volunteer sport. Without the volunteers, none of the organizations would be able to run their shows.

We’ve got a great group. There is a lady that stepped forward about a year ago, whose name is Lindsay Minter and she’s my volunteer coordinator for cross-country day. She’s ultimately ended up being coordinator for the whole thing. She’s a young gal. She’s very excited. She gets everybody excited. We’ve had a big increase in the number of people coming out to volunteer and help, some of who rid, and some who don’t have anything to do with riding, but just enjoy what we’re doing, and enjoy watching the sport.

Chris: Do you get much media coverage over there? Can you warm up the local media at this time and get them engaged in the events that you have?

John: We’ve gotten a little bit of media coverage here. I think that what we have to do and what we’re working towards doing is getting more involvement in the community. We need to do that. The horse park is not well-known in the Fresno community. Again, we’re working on changing that. As the shows get larger, we’re getting more vendors, and we’re reaching out to vendors to get them to come to the show because of the traffic, as we have more vendors, as we have more competitors from the local area, that, we believe will draw more spectators which will get more interest from the media. That’s a tough process but we’re working on it. Three-day eventing is not that well-known here, and we’re working on educating the public.

The city of Fresno has 500,000 people, and then there’s another city that’s going together with it, which is Clovis which is another 100,000 people. There’s a million people in the trade area. We’re making progress on it. One of the things that we have to do, and we’re trying to do is to educate people about three-day eventing. The Fresno/Clovis area, there’s a large western riding community here. There’s a rodeo in Clovis every year. I think they had their 100-year anniversary last year. There’s a large riding community here. There is a significant dressage group in the area. There’s a significant show jumping group in the area. We’re trying to reach out to all those people. We’re starting to put on dressage shows at the horse park to try to draw them into paying more attention.

We think there’s a larger group we can attract more attention from the media. It’s just going to take some time.

Chris: Well, the best of luck with it. Thank you for coming on the program this week. I hope your events go well this spring.

John: They will, and watch for the results.

Chris: Katie Coleman joins us now. She was formerly the manager for Pollard Eventing as Katie Thornton and she’s now married to William Coleman. Katie joins us from Florida where they are based for winter training. Katie Coleman, welcome to the program.

Katie: Thank you very much Chris.

Chris: Congratulations from all of us here at the USEA for your recent wedding last year.

Katie: Thank you so much. We are very excited … Growing up.

Chris: Obviously, very busy too. How many horses do you have in training now for this season?

Katie: We’ve got, I think 22 down here with us. We’re staying at Liz Halliday’s farm, her new facility. She’s been nice enough to rent us one of her barns for the winter. Yeah, we are very busy. We got 22 total. I guess probably 17 of those would be immediately ours, and then we have a student that’s down here with 5 of her horses. There’s plenty to do in the day.

Chris: At all levels, up to full stock?

Katie: All levels. Yeah, we’ve got four-year-olds up to our [inaudible 00:13:01] and then everything in-between.

Chris: When does the season kick off for William?

Katie: We’re taking January pretty slow. We’re focusing on training this month. Our younger horses will do their first trial at the second Ocala horse park. I believe that’s the second weekend in February. Then the big guys will do a combined test there. Then they really kick off their season at Pinetop Advance. That’s when the big guys will start their full-on horse trials.

Chris: I can imagine as the wife of William Coleman, you are the stable manager, organizer. You pretty much run everything I imagine.

Katie: Yeah, we’ve got some great girls and some wonderful working students working for us. Our head girl, Alicia [inaudible 00:13:51], she’s really our head girl. She’s our manager, but yes, I can’t help but play a bit of a role in the stable management. It’s hard to stand back and watch everything. Yeah, I do play a bit of a part in running the grooming side of things. For the most part, I’m helping Will. I do some riding, and I do a lot of videotaping of Will’s riding. I’m still trying to find out my role. I [inaudible 00:14:16], but it is a fun place to be.

Chris: Never a dull moment, I’m sure.

Katie: No.

Chris: You mentioned stable management. Then of course, you were previously the manager, weren’t you at Michael Pollard’s for some time there.

Katie: Yes.

Chris: You were well-known for having lots of grooming tips for your stable management and the high standard of stable management, so I thought no better person to get on the show than give us a stable management tip this week. What have you got for us Katie?

Katie: We’ll we’ve had to adjust to the Florida skin therapies here down in Ocala this year. We normally go to Aiken. I know there’s a lot of, we used to call it the Florida funk that we have to deal with down here, more so in Ocala than we did in Aiken. We’ve incorporated it into our everyday use. It’s an after-bath rinse. Fill a grain pail, maybe a gallon of warm water. We do about three glugs of organic apple cider vinegar. You have to get the organic stuff. Then we put a few capfuls of baby oil in there as well. We sponge that all over our horses’ coats. To rinse it off, you just scrape it off and let the horse air dry.

We find that really helps with skin conditions, with hives. It also acts as a natural fly repellant, and it just makes them really soft and shiny. We use that every day. Sometimes, we use it in place of a bath, but it also works well after a bath. It gets the extra soap residue out of their coats. That’s something that’s very cost-effective. It is not expensive and it’s really easy to do every day. That’s what we’ve been doing. That’s my tip for USEA this week.

Chris: It’s combating the scale, that scabbiness. It clears all that up does it?

Katie: It does, yeah. Apple cider vinegar as well has a lot of healing qualities. It’s magnificent stuff. I don’t know the science behind all of it, but I just know that it works, so that’s why we use it.

Chris: What about in the hills? In Europe where they have so much mud, you get that mud rash, you get the rain rash, you get the mud fever and that sort of thing. Have you ever used it for those kinds of conditions?

Katie: No, but I hear if you mix it with tea tree oil, and you put it in a spray bottle, you can spray it and it will work on their feet very well. We haven’t done that, but I have read that people use that. Apple cider vinegar mixed with tea tree oil in a spray bottle, and you spray that in their feet when it gets wet outside.

Chris: Today, his medicine cabinet looks a lot different from what it did 20 years ago, doesn’t it?

Katie: It does.

Chris: In fact, you’re actually going back to a lot of the natural remedies.

Katie: Exactly.

Chris: When you think back to the previous century or the late 19th century of course, they used very natural remedies, didn’t they?

Katie: I’m sure they used apple cider vinegar a lot more.

Chris: You can’t remember Katie?

Katie: I can’t remember. I think that was before my time.

Chris: Thank you very much indeed for that. I hope you will join us again for more of your stable management tips.

Katie: Thanks Chris. Thanks for having me.

Chris: A reminder that you’ll find a transcript of this podcast on the website at www.useventing.com. This podcast is also available for download from the iTunes store through your Smartphone podcast app, so you can listen to the show on the go. Thank you for your company this week. Until the next time, enjoy your eventing.