A crowd of more than 400 people is expected to descend on Cavan Equestrian Centre next Wednesday, October 22nd, for the Horse Sport Ireland annual coaching and breeding conference.

This year the conference is entitled ‘Production of Horses for Profit and Performance’ and to that end has a range of speakers lined up to address both the breeding and production of horses for a successful career in sport.

Headlining the conference will be French international show jumping legend Michel Robert.

Now aged 65, Robert has had a distinguished career spanning the past 44 years, during which time he won 13 medals at Olympic, World Games and European level. His medals include five World Championship medals, six European Championship medals and two Olympic medals.

In 2009, he won the final of the Global Champions Tour CSI***** Grand Prix in Doha and he has been the French National Champion no less than five times.

Since his retirement from international competition in 2013, Robert has dedicated himself to training and educating the next generation of riders through his series of books and DVDs. He has also developed a series of training tools for show jumpers, including an adjustable water, blocks and poles.

His training of both horse and rider is incremental, while he is a firm believer in building trust between horse and rider. Among his training methods, he encourages riders to talk and even sing to their horses to reassure them, a technique he used himself in the jumping arena.

“I would sing the Lakes of Connemara while the jump judge looked at me - I didn’t care, it reassured my horse!” he recalled.

As well as talking about his training methods, Robert is expected to demonstrate useful exercises for both young horses and horses well into their competitive careers.

Guinea pig riders on the day will include Irish national show jumping champion Greg Broderick, Sophie Dalm and Army Equitation School rider Captain Michael Kelly.

The same riders will take part in demonstrations by Andy Thomas, the lead practitioner for human science and sports medicine at the British Equestrian Federation (BEF).

Speaking to The Irish Field earlier this week, the physiotherapist said he intended to address the issue of rider imbalance and asymmetry, an issue which he said is encountered at every level from amateur rider right up to top flight elite athletes.

“One of the most common problems is that rider may have a weakness on one side of his or her body which affects the muscles on that side. This can lead to the rider collapsing to one side and the horse drifting to one side,” he explained. “This can in turn result in saddle slippage to one side, which can have a longer term effect on the horse’s movement and way of going.”

“Sometimes rider asymmetry can have a profound effect on competition performance, for example a horse running out to one side, inability to turn quickly in a jump-off scenario or losing marks in lateral work in the dressage arena,” added Thomas.

Riders are often guilty of ignoring problems in their own bodies, while at the same time investing large amounts of time and money on their horse’s treatment and training.

“This happens in part because riders are stoic in many ways and will put up with a lot of pain and discomfort. They would spend hours treating a horse if injured but nearly die if you ask them to do five minutes working on themselves,” he laughed.

However the growing culture of exercise and physical movement is beginning to change riders’ attitudes, according to the chartered physiotherapist. In his role with the British Equestrian Federation, Thomas works with top riders across the disciplines of show jumping, eventing and dressage.

“Charlotte Dujardin pays particular attention to imbalances in her own body and works very hard to eliminate them,” he remarked. “She spends a lot of time in the gym working and I will work with her in the 10 minutes before she gets on the horse for a Grand Prix test.

“In show jumping Ben Maher and Scott Brash pay attention to their own bodies, and in eventing William Fox-Pitt and Zara Phillips work hard. At the top end that these riders are competing at, the margins between winning and losing are so tight that the riders want to grab the smallest of margins to give them the winning edge. They know they can’t afford to drop marks.”

At the Horse Sport Ireland conference next week Thomas will outline how to identify and treat imbalances in the rider so as to improve the overall performance of both horse and rider.

Meanwhile, on the breeding side, regular visitor to Ireland Jacques Verkerk is expected to give Irish breeders advice on how to improve their selection of both mares and stallions for their breeding programmes.

“I will be talking about linear scoring and what a useful tool it is for breeders to judge their own animals,” he told The Irish Field. “We are all subjective about our own animals and I think that if you get an outsider to assess your animals using linear scoring, it will help to give you an impression of how your horse looks as an athlete and how it looks compared to what you want to breed.”

A former inspector for the KWPN both in the Netherlands and North America, Verkerk specialises in judging, selecting sport horses and lectures all around the world on sport horse breeding, judging and linear profiling. He also chairs the selection committee of the Elite Foal Auction Borculo, one of the top auctions in Europe.

Linear scoring is a tool that Verkerk has employed in his own breeding programme.

“I use linear scoring on all my horses from foals up to young horses starting to jump,” he said. “But I do not just focus on my own linear score sheets. I went to Leipzig to the World Cup finals and watched the horses there to complete linear scores for them too. This allowed me to use those scores of the best show jumping horses in the world to compare against my own horses.

“I could then ask; do my horses look like these top athletes? It is also something I would advise breeders to do, look at the top Grand Prix horses on TV - have your linear score sheet in mind and ask if you are breeding the same type of horse?” advised Verkerk.

The final speaker of the day will be Dr Emmeline Hill, a UCD lecturer in Equine Science and and leader of the equine exercise genomics research group funded by Science Foundation Ireland at the UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science.

She has been at the forefront of thoroughbred performance genomics during the last decade and has published more scientific papers on equine exercise genomics than any other researcher worldwide.

Hill is also a co-founder and chairman of Equinome, the technology company that was established in 2009 to develop novel genetic tests to determine the genetic potential of individual thoroughbred horses to succeed in racing. The Equinome Speed Gene Test examines a particular gene which affects muscle mass development and by extension, can determine the race distance which may best suit the horse.

Both Emmeline Hill and Jacques Verkerk will address how conformation and genetics can affect horses’ competition performance, advise on making the correct breeding decisions and what qualities to look for when selecting young stock.

The Horse Sport Ireland coaching and breeding conference takes place at Cavan Equestrian Centre on Wednesday, October 22nd from 9am to 5pm. Tickets cost €50 per adult and €45 per student/child (including lunch). Tickets are pre-paid only and places must be booked in advance so to book your place, contact Catherine Farrell on 045-854512 or cfarrell@horsesportireland.ie