The very first time Marc Brule? saw Archime?des he had not expected that this horse would lead him to his first international dressage competition at the 2011 CDI Compiegne in France on 10 - 12 June 2011. When the Westfalian gelding Archime?des (by Abanos x Parademarsch) arrived at his new French stable in February 2009, the horse was 8 years old.
The horse proved a handful at the start. The gelding immediately proved his "willing" character by running away from the handler who wanted to bring him to his stable. "You also could not do a simple transition from walk to trot,'" Brulé admitted. Despite having received the advice to quit working this horse, Marc decided not to give up. He did a few lower level tests with him in 2009. "I had trained several horses from different ages and breeds, but I felt something could be very great in this horse so I persisted."
Even though Archimedes slowly started to focus more on his rider, at competitions he remained sensitive to ride and anxious in the arena. "All his energy was flying away after 10 or 15 minutes of training," Brulé stated.
In 2010 Marc started to train with Georg Fincke in order to give confidence and strenght to the introvert Archimedes. The horse was very pleased with this kind of training and made huge progress. At the end of the year, he was introduced to Prix St Georges level competitions and quickly earned the silver medal at the French championship in Saumur.
In 2011, Brulé and Archimedes moved up one level and began competing at Intermediaire I level with success. On a national level the pair scored 68% on average and won at several shows. "The horse slowly became real show man," said Brulé in relief.
French dressage selector and senior chef d'equipe Alain Franqueville spotted Brulé's rise at small tour level and decided to place the pair on the "High Level" French long list, which meant that they were able to get a spot at their first international show together.
The Brulé family decided upon going to the CDI Compiegne and left their stable in Deauville, France, on Wednesday 8 June 2011 to arrive on time at the competition. With the vet inspection going on on Thursday evening, the riders got the opportunity to train the horses in the main arena in the afternoon.
Their first start was Friday afternoon and because the weather turned hot, it was hard to estimate what the right warm up would be. "Everything went pretty well, but at the end of the training, about 10 minutes before the test, the horse started to get tired," Brulé admitted. The pair started out with good trot work and the horse felt settled down in his work. Unfortunately in the walk the horse became tense which pushed the walk scores down considerably. "In canter he had no energy left," Brulé explained. "We made mistakes in the zig zag, the pirouettes and the 3 tempi's so it resulted in a very bad score of 58.921% With this low score the rider's confidence in his training of Archimedes dropped below zero.
Fortunately as the pair had decided to do the Intermediaire I instead of the Inter I Kur, they had a day off on Saturday and Archimedes was only very lightly schooled. "I wanted to check his suppleness and reactivity. We walked and grazed him in the afternoon and he seemed to be relaxed and in good shape."
On Sunday morning the Inter I started at 8h00 and Brulé decided to do only a 30-minute warm up with 10 minutes of walking in hand before that. "The warm up went very well and we were able to do quite a good test because Archimedes was more responsive to my aids," Marc explained. "My ride still wasn't accurate enough. We made big pirouettes, a mistake in the zig zag as well as in the two tempi's but I was satisfied." The pair scored 63.553% and placed 11th.
Even though the pair did not achieve the dream ride they had hoped for, but their first CDI experience was a good one. "Our first CDI was a great experience," Brulé admitted. "It was so nice to watch so many good riders and horses and gave me good ideas to work on and it was great motivation for the future."
Related Links
Scores 2011 CDI Compiegne
French Dressage Teams for 2011 Announced