Saturday, August 20, 2016

Speaking of saddles...

I didn't follow the Olympics much but did see Nick Skelton's Gold-medal show jumping ride on Facebook. He's a sixty-ish?-year-old Brit with a metal plate in his hip and a lot of injuries, including a broken neck that led him to retire once. He came back from it obviously.

What's extra great about this is that he apparently did it in an old Stubben saddle -- look at those panels! And is it slightly askew?

You can see the winning round on Facebook, and one of his rounds on Youtube.




4 comments:

  1. AnonymousAugust 22, 2016 at 8:09 AM

    I used to have one of those. It was my favorite for trail riding, but not bad for jumping either.

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  2. RiderWriterAugust 22, 2016 at 6:07 PM

    I caught sight of his saddle during the jumping (most of which I watched live, crying many happy tears at the end) and thought, "Hmmm.. what is that? Not a fancy French couch, for sure!" Had no idea it was THAT old and probably hard as a rock for horse and rider! Good think "Henry" has the nice Ogilvy pad underneath to protect his back but Nick's rear end has got to take a beating. ;)

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  3. UnknownSeptember 1, 2016 at 11:32 AM

    I love it!

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  4. TraceyJanuary 1, 2017 at 3:04 AM

    I was lucky enough to meet Nick Skelton back in the late 80's at the Royal Winter Fair (in Toronto,Ont), where I was working as part of a practicum all students of the Humber College equine program were required to do...a lovely man. Being British myself, I had spent many years watching him on TV when I was a child, as well as David Broome, Harvey Smith, John Whitaker and the like...such exciting riders to watch at Hickstead! Now, I live just 15 minutes from Spruce Meadows, a premier show jumping facility :-) I love Stubben saddles! When I was training professionally, just out of equine college, the owner had a brand new Stubben dressage saddle for me to use, it was a close contact saddle and I loved it. My younger sister bought an all purpose Stubben that looks almost exactly like the one in the photograph above and now that I think about it, it's about 30 years old! We still use it! :-) I still find the Stubben saddles to be incredibly comfortable ;-)

    ReplyDelete

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