*Exclusive*: ‘Not every day is a perfect day – patience and positivity are very important’: Lottie Fry shares her training mantras 

“I’m very lucky,” says Lottie Fry. She moved to the Netherlands in 2014 to train with the van Olsts and has lived there ever since. Anne van Olst is a five-time Olympian and Lottie’s trainer and mentor, and the operation focuses on stallions at stud, dressage, training, youngstock and buying and selling horses. Lottie’s good fortune is in the horses she rides. 

She explains that Anne’s husband, Gertjan van Olst, “is breeding horses all the time, and always trying to improve”. There are currently 27 much-garlanded stallions on the Van Olst site including household names such as Everdale and Glamourdale.

Lottie adds: “One of the top attributes that Gertjan’s looking for is good character. It’s very important, right from the beginning, especially for stallions, because they need to balance the breeding and the sport – and it’s very difficult unless they have good character.”

What exactly is “good character”? It means “they love their job”, Lottie explains. “I love it when you get on a horse and they want to please and want to do the job for you. It makes my job easier! They’re very easy to train, and the breeding offspring we have are so talented as young horses.”

“It’s very important to take every horse as an individual, they’re all slightly different, there will never be two the same, so we keep an open mind and train them each as they need to be trained. Some take longer, we go at their speed,” adds Lottie.

That good character has to include a certain stage-craft to perform well in dressage, they need to “have that showmanship; the stallion side makes it very exciting”.

No shortcuts to building a partnership

It’s essential to be attentive to their characters from the beginning, Lottie says: “Once you start to work, you see how the horses react on the ground around you, how they are in the stable, if they’re nervous or confident and you build them up to create a partnership. The better they know you and you know them, the more likely it’s going to go well.”

There’s no shortcut to building rapport, Lottie points out: “It comes with time, it’s the same as humans, some trust a lot easier than others, but when you gain the trust, they’ll do anything for you.”

Case in point is Glamourdale, Lottie’s Olympic team and individual bronze medallist. The bond is tangible and she says: “I’ve been riding him since he was six. In the beginning, I was very young as well and we grew together. I always trusted him from the start and he me as well. \

“I remember thinking the first time I sat on him, I don’t think I’ve ever ridden anything this amazing, it was an incredible feeling. When you’re really positive about horses they get very positive about their work and enjoy it.”

“When you canter it’s like flying,” Lottie Fry on Glamourdale

What was that feeling? “He’s so powerful when you canter it’s like flying, but he’s also elastic and supple at the same time, and it’s rare to be so powerful and elegant; he’s the perfect dressage horse,” says Lottie.

Training takes place four times a week, sessions are well planned and “every day is a little different – we never work on the same things, so I take what I need to work on, and focus on that more specifically. We don’t do everything every day – I’d never do the whole grand prix in one session,” explains Lottie.

At home, Glamourdale is engaged with everyone. “If you come into the stable and say, ‘hi’, he immediately replies! He’s super chatty and he loves getting treats. He’s the king, so why shouldn’t he? If someone else gets a treat, he has to have one as well, even if they’ve just worked, he has to have one as well, just for being Glammy!”.

The horses all enjoy their freedoms, but, to put it mildly: “It’s not easy with breeding stallions. Anything that moves unsupervised they think might be for breeding. We have special individual paddocks for stallions, with proper fences; the geldings and mares are out in the fields.”

It’s not a training principle as such, but Lottie and the team never lose sight of the fact that the horses are their own entities, and “not every day is a perfect day, as with us. When you work with animals, patience and positivity are very important.”

Lottie Fry – the basics are key

If sessions aren’t progressing, Lottie goes back to basics, and says that they spend 90% of the time working on basics: walk, trot, canter, straight lines, transitions. “They’re all needed in the movement eventually, and if the basics are good, it’s so much easier”.

Holidays are incorporated into the schedule, particularly after a major competition – when we talk, Glammy is having an easy few weeks after the Paris Olympics, “stretching, hacking, chilling” and will be slowly built back for the winter season and breeding again.

The key to keeping these star athletes happy in training is making the work enjoyable, which means variety. This includes hacking, a water treadmill, and grass turnout. There’s also regular physio, light therapy and “a lot of attention”.

“They feel good about themselves,” Lottie says.

After a few weeks off, “Glammy wants to work. He’s quite fresh and he definitely misses the work. It’s a really nice thing, he gets excited to start training,” Lottie says, adding, “He’s a very happy pony.”

Describing a 16.3hh breeding stallion as a “happy pony” shows the profound level of affection in which this horse is held.

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