Horseytalk.net Special Interview
Laura Tomlinson
"It’s been a life changing twelve months", says Laura
This year Olympic gold and bronze medallist Laura Tomlinson will be hosting the National Championships Master Class at Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire.
The Master Class is held on Saturday 21 September and Sunday 22 September, and is free to attend with a standard entrance ticket, starting from as little as £13 for adults.
For more information see the BD Championships website.
We caught up with Laura to find out more about her year following on from the magic of London 2012 and asked her about her training and inspirational moments...
The past 12 months must have been a whirlwind for you! Can you describe your year since winning two Olympic medals and getting married?
Oh no, that’s such a difficult question!
It’s been a complete whirlwind, the two biggest things of my life happened at the same time – reaching the pinnacle of my professional career by achieving my dream with Alf at the Olympics and then being proposed to by Mark. It’s been a life changing twelve months.
Lots of your fans were disappointed to hear that Alf wasn’t going to be competing at the recent Europeans. How is he doing now?
Alf picked up a small tendon injury over the summer which he has recovered from now but it meant that we lost some time building him up to peak form towards the lift off for the Europeans.
After the Olympics, Dad and I both agreed that Alf owed us absolutely nothing, that everything from then on would be a bonus and that we wouldn’t compete him unless he was absolutely 100% and we could show him at his very best. We stuck to that promise.
I’m hoping that Alf will make an appearance at Olympia, perhaps to compete, but at the very least to give a farewell and thank you to his home crowd.
Not only will you be hosting the Master Class, you will also be competing! Can you tell us about your plans as a rider for this year’s Nationals?
It’s going to be very busy. I will be competing Unique and Polar Bear in the PSG and then Unique again in the Inter I.
My stable jockey Lara will also be competing Andretti H in the Grand Prix, so between my own classes, supporting Lara and hosting the master class I expect I will be spending most of the four days running around like a headless chicken!
How many National titles have you won, and which was your favourite/most memorable?
It’s hard to keep track of everything when competing has been your life but I know for sure that I had won every Nationals class I had competed in up until last year when that pesky Mr Carl Hester went and beat Andy and I in the Grand Prix and Freestyle on Uthopia!
My most memorable was probably in 2005 when I won the Grand Prix with Douglas Dorsey and the PSG with Alf. At that time I was only 20, and the youngest person ever to have won the Grand Prix title, it was really the beginning of lots of good things.
Entries have now closed for the Nationals - if you were betting woman who would you put your money on for this year’s Grand Prix classes? (You can see entries by following this link)
It looks like a really strong line up this year. My money has to be on Lara and Andretti because they have had such great form together this season. They both coped really well with the pressure at Hickstead so I’m hoping the atmosphere at the Nationals won’t faze them and that they will be able to keep their cool and come out on top.
Andy might look straightforward but he’s not as easy as he might appear and Lara has really had to learn how to ride him to get a tune out of him.
She’s been patient and dedicated and has really earned this chance to go out and compete with him.
There’s some tough competition looking at the entries list. Carl with Fine Time, Michael with Marakov and Gareth with Nadonna all look like good bets to me, but I’ll be keeping my focus on supporting Lara.
Without giving too much away can you tell us what people might expect to see in your Master Class?
Well I’ll definitely being showing the audience some of my homebreds, possibly Pamina and Polar Bear.
We’ll be looking at work from Advanced Medium through to PSG with a focus on showing people a very real picture of how I train a horse in a way that is appropriate for their level and showing the work that goes in before a horse reaches Grand Prix.
I want people to come away from the master class feeling like they’ve learned something that is relevant to them and hopefully the atmosphere might give us the opportunity to deal with ‘blips’ as they arise, as would be the case with every normal training session.
We often hear you say that your Dad is your most influential trainer, but who was/is his?
There’s probably three people; Sheila Wilcox from back in his early career during his eventing days, Harry Boldt (German Olympic gold medallist and former German team trainer) and Klaus (Balkenhol), who has been such an important part of both of our lives.
Your most inspiring/memorable training experience?
It’s too hard to pinpoint just one, especially with the homebreds and young horses when you have those moments when it clicks and you think ‘yes!’
I do remember the time when Pamina found her sixth gear in the arena at home - that was amazing. I was riding with my Dad and it just happened suddenly – she felt like a hover craft!
Your earliest horsey memory?
That’s a tricky one because all of my early memories are horsey ones!
Your number one competition moment?
Well that would have to be winning an individual bronze and team gold with Alf at the London 2012 Olympics!
It’s so hard to describe how that moment felt, it was such a mixture of emotions from relief to the sinking in feeling of realising that you have achieved the biggest thing that you could.
Winning the Olympics has changed things for me in such a positive way; I’m still hungry for success and remain 100% motivated, but it has afforded me the most relaxed contented feeling because I don’t feel like I have to prove myself so much anymore.
And your number one training tip?
For the rider to always use their head, to think.
When something’s not working, 99% of the time it’s because there is a breakdown in communication between you and the horse and he no longer understands what you are asking at that moment.
Stop, and think about how you are communicating with him rather than getting bogged down in repeating the same request and getting nowhere.
Not everybody can be a world-beater like you and Alf, but for all those grass roots combinations who have worked hard and made it to the Nationals, what advice would you give them to help prepare for a big competition?
I would say to go and enjoy it. If this is what you’ve worked for, don’t waste it by getting overly stressed because it will be over in a flash.
Prepare, but don’t change how you do things – after all how you do things is what got you there in the first place!
And last of all, if you weren’t a rider what do you think you would be?
I think I was always going to be some kind of sportswoman but if I had to do a ‘desk’ job I might have been travelling the world using my Philosophy and Politics degree as an international journalist!