| The
Below article is reprinted from Eventing News USA, with the permission
of the Editor, Anthony Trollope, and the Author, Karen Briggs. David
O'Connor to Train Canadians
Leesburg, VA
by
Karen Briggs 
The Canadian eventing team
has retained the services of Olympic Gold Medallist David O'Connor for
a series of high-performance clinics through the end of 2005. The commitment will
include accompanying a squadron of five to six Canadian horses and riders looking
to gain international experience to the Blair Castle CCI***, in Scotland,
at the end of August.  (David
is pictured at the right jumping into the first water with Walk on the Moon, in
the Preliminary Section at the Radnor International last fall.)
Mike
Gallagher, chair of Canadian Eventing's High Performance Committee, noted
that because of his concurrent obligations as president of the United States Equestrian
Federation, O'Connor would prefer not to be described as the "Canadian
Team coach," as was his predecessor, Jim Wofford. Instead, the High
Performance Committee, ". . . has hired David for a series of three clinics
for our high-performance and Talent Squad riders, one each about four weeks ahead
of Blair Castle, the Radnor CCI** [in October 2005] and the Fair Hill CCI*** [also
in October], as well as traveling to Scotland…with the potential to continue
the relationship after that. "We're
looking for him to be a mentor as well as a clinician," Gallagher
added. "Ideally of course we would be hiring someone to take our riders all
the way to Beijing in a four-year program, but we're not 100 percent sure of David's
availability over the next few years, so we decided to put together a short-term
series of clinics and then assess its success after Fair Hill." O'Connor,
who retired from international competition in 2004 in favor of coaching and administrative
roles, said, "[The Canadians] didn't really have anyone working with them
[since Wofford's commitment ended early in 2005], and there was some really
good momentum building there which was going to end. I just saw kind of a void
there that I thought Karen and I could help with by opening up our clinic
schedule. We'll just take it one step at a time. I'm excited about it, and I think
the [Canadians] are excited about it. They have some very talented riders and
if we can help them achieve their goals, that's great." Copyright
2005 Karen Briggs. Reproduction in any format without prior permission of the
author prohibited. KAREN
BRIGGS, freelance journalist/photographer
1998 American Horse Publications
award winner
Author of "Understanding Equine Nutrition", "Understanding
the Pony", "Crazy
for Horses", "Still Crazy for Horses", and "Crazy for Ponies"
*** JUST RELEASED by Scholastic Canada! "TOTALLY CRAZY FOR HORSES!"
***
briggs@csolve.net briggs@darwood.ca 10707
First Line, RR #4
Roseneath, Ontario
K0K 2X0 Canada.
phone (905)
352-2662 / fax (905) 352-3368 |
