Читать книгу Riding for the Team - United States Equestrian Team Foundation - Страница 12

Rich Fellers

It Pays to Be Flexible

Rich Fellers began his show jumping career at age 11 when he received a two-year-old Appaloosa, Sure Chic, for his birthday and then taught him to jump up to World Cup qualifier level. Rich has had many successes since, including a team bronze medal at the 1991 Pan American Games on El Mirasol, and two U.S. Equestrian Federation Grand Prix Horse of the Year honors with McGuinness and Stealth Sprenger. But he is most closely identified with Flexible, the USEF’s International Horse of the Year in 2012. Flexible and Rich were the top-placed American combination in the London Olympics, finishing eighth. Four months earlier, they won the 2012 FEI World Cup Final, the first time in a quarter-century that the title finally came back to the United States. Affectionately known as Flexi, the Irish stallion competed in a record eight World Cup Finals. Flexi and Rich also were members of the winning U.S. Nations Cup teams at the Spruce Meadows Masters in 2008 and 2010. Flexi was the individual winner of many major Grands Prix over his long career, including the 2015 $126,000 Longines FEI World Cup™ North American League qualifier at Thunderbird Show Park in Langley, British Columbia, when he was 19.

Rich and his wife, Shelley, are the parents of a daughter, Savannah, and a son, Chris. He helps them operate the Rich Fellers Stable out of Timberline Meadows Farm in Oregon.

It started out as a gamble in 1989 when we took Harry and Mollie Chapman up on their invitation for my wife, Shelley, and me to work privately for their Oregon stable. It meant leaving a good business and a prime opportunity in Southern California. But we saw it as an offer we shouldn’t refuse and made the move. It was fortunate that Harry and Mollie came along to partner with us, because that really changed our lives in a big way.

Both Shelley and I had grown up in rural areas: I was from Oregon and she was from Kentucky, so while thinking of starting a family we wanted to raise our kids in a similar type of region rather than bustling Southern California. I knew Harry for years; he and his daughter competed on a local Northwest show circuit during my youth and he ran the store where I used to buy my tack.

Harry always referred to “the pipeline”: he had to have a pipeline of horses coming along. During the early 1990s, Irish bloodstock agent Dermot Forde met Mollie in the VIP area of the La Silla show in Monterrey, Mexico, and that led to years of horse shopping in Ireland. In 2002, we were looking for a horse in Cavan and saw Flexible in the young horse competition. He was a jumping machine, the only six-year-old in the finals of a competition for six- and seven-year-old horses, where he finished second. Edward Doyle did a phenomenal job producing him.

The 2012 London Olympics was the realization of a long-held ambition for Rich Fellers and the brave little stallion Flexible. The combination was the highest placed on the U.S. team at those Games, finishing eighth.

We bought him, and he spent 30 days in stallion quarantine at the University of California at Davis. Then he had to be trucked up to Oregon, so he wasn’t at his best when he arrived. As he stepped off the van, I said, “Wow, he’s so much smaller than I thought.” Flexi had been a stout, muscular 16 hands when I tried him, but he’d lost muscle tone, grown some hair, wasn’t shod, and looked like a little fat pony.

George Morris was teaching a clinic at Harry and Mollie’s the day our horse came to his new home, so we took him to see Flexible. George looked at him and looked at me and didn’t know what to say. Harry wasn’t so impressed either. But that all kind of changed when Flexi showed us what he could do.

I had some concerns, but I knew what I’d seen and what I’d felt when I tried him. Shelley and I were both confident he would be really competitive. Actually, he already was competitive and we’d watched him in action.

Since he was very much a blood horse with lots of energy, we figured Flexi would shine in speed classes. He was by Cruising out of a mare named Flex who won the 1995 Irish National Championships (defeating Cruising while she was in foal to him!). From a bloodline perspective, Flexi is basically three-quarters Irish Thoroughbred. He started competing in Florida as a seven-year-old. I jumped him in a 1.30-meter class in the indoor ring in Tampa. John Madden was standing there and he wanted that horse. He picked him out right away.

Rich Fellers’ victory gallop on Flexible at the 2012 FEI World Cup Show Jumping Finals was the first for a U.S. rider at that competition in 25 years.

When Rich Fellers took the offer from Harry Chapman to ride for his stable in Oregon, it changed his life. He and his wife, Shelley, were very close to Harry, who died in 2018, and his wife, Mollie.

Harry and Mollie said, “No, he’s not for sale.” They did that many times, and I really respect that. I was always very good about letting them know when someone was interested, and they were always polite about saying no.

At the end of Flexi’s seven-year-old year in 2004, he had a vein blockage in his right foreleg and was out for almost two years. In 2007, when he was getting back into the sport, I had a very unlucky year. My two top Grand Prix horses, McGuinness and Gyro, suffered injuries. My “number three” horse at the time was Flexible, who was healthy again and had won a big speed class that summer at Spruce Meadows.

After Gyro was sidelined, we said, “Okay, let’s see if Flexible’s ready to start jumping some bigger classes.” That fall, he jumped in his first World Cup qualifier in the Equidome at the Los Angeles National Horse Show. He won, which was a bit shocking, not only to me, Harry and Mollie, my crew, and my wife, but I think the other competitors, as well.

He won several World Cup qualifiers in 2008, definitely making the transition from a speed horse to a Grand Prix horse. He went to his first World Cup final in the spring of 2008 in Gothenburg, Sweden, where he was fourth the first day in the speed round and we were very impressed. Even at 1.50 meters, the jumps looked quite large at that stage, especially since on the West Coast, World Cup qualifiers were a bit light. The second round of the final looked un-jumpable when Shelley and I walked the course. But Flexible just flew right around, and I had the winning time in the jump-off, although we had the last rail down.

I was shocked and amazed at how well Flexible was doing. On Sunday, I had four faults in the first round and going into the final round, I was still in good shape. There weren’t too many clear there. The last round, I remember people walking the final line over and over again—the whole track was very big and the final line was big and technical. But Flexi handled it.

I wound up second to Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum of Germany and her sensational Shutterfly. It was quite a thrill and a surprise for our whole team. That really launched Flexible’s spectacular career. He went to the World Cup finals every year after, 2008 through 2016, with the exception of 2014 (because he had major blood clots in his right hind leg in 2013).

In 2012, we were involved in trying to get on the London Olympic team. After the initial trials, we were third, but with some subjective adjustments, we were dropped down to seventh, and I found myself on the outside looking in.

I went to the World Cup finals in the Netherlands that spring before the Olympics with a bit of a chip on my shoulder and something to prove. We weren’t helped by transportation problems from a cancelled flight that meant a 20-hour trailer ride to Los Angeles and a re-routed flight that got us to s’Hertogenbosch much later than we planned.

We were concerned Flexi would be wrung out, but it didn’t seem to affect him. He won the speed round. In the big jump-off on Friday, there was a tricky combination that caught a lot of people. I had a fence down but so did several others. Even so, I went into the final two rounds on the Sunday within a rail of the lead. After the second round that day, Steve Guerdat of Switzerland and I were tied, which meant a jump-off.

George Morris, the U.S. team coach, asked me what I wanted to jump in the warm-up and I told him I didn’t want to jump. He looked a bit stunned and said, “That’s great.” I did walk/trot transitions as Steve was getting his superstar, Nino des Buissonets, ready to go in the jump-off.

When Steve headed to the ring I followed him and stepped up to watch him go as the groom held my horse. Steve was blazing fast and his horse, which Meredith told me was the fastest in Europe, jumped super. (Nino and Steve would go on four months later to win individual gold at the Olympics.) The crowd roared and I hopped on little Flexible.

I said I could ride the same track and do the same numbers. There was an option to leave out a stride in the last line. I felt if I tried to match Steve’s track, that Flexible would be faster because he’s quick across the ground and he wasn’t a big over-jumper. I left out the stride, as Steve did, and made neat turns. That was obviously enough to bring the World Cup trophy back to the United States for the first time since 1987.

After I won the World Cup finals, I was feeling like, “Okay, the ball is in the (Olympic) selectors’ court.”

The next target was the observation trials. We went to Del Mar a couple of weeks after the World Cup and Flexible was still on fire. We won both of those trials. Then we headed to Calgary. We rested him, so he was fresh, sound, and still feeling very young at 16. I didn’t jump any extra classes with him. It was a very difficult track for the first class, with only two clear, myself and Beezie Madden on Coral Reef Via Volo. He won that. Later that week was the final trial and then the team would be picked. Flexible was still fresh as a daisy.

I never jumped a fence to prep for any of those jump-offs at Del Mar or Calgary. I would just do flatwork and keep him on the aids. I followed Kent Farrington in the ring for the tiebreaker in that final trial. He was riding Uceko and really fast. That particular jump-off track had one place where you jumped a vertical and then you landed and made a left loop around an oxer. I thought, “I can jump this vertical on an extreme angle, right to left, and could pull Flexible left and turn back right to this oxer.” It was very awkward but definitely a shorter track moving around to that oxer. I told my son, Chris, who walked the course with me, that it was doable for Flexible.

I said, “I want to win and make sure I make the team, and I’m going to make that kind of awkward, funny turn there.” The whole crowd oohed and aahed when I jumped the vertical on that super angle. Someone who was videoing asked, “Is he lost? He’s going the wrong way.” But I wasn’t. I couldn’t do anything wrong, and that sealed the deal as far as team selection. It pays to be Flexible! I was super-proud of Flexi and happy with my performance.

That’s how I made the squad for the London Olympics and realized a lifetime ambition by competing there. Although I ended up eighth individually, the highest-placed American, as a team we didn’t finish where we would have liked to and were out of the medals. Even so, it was a great experience and Flexi came through for the country.

That wasn’t anywhere near the end of Flexi’s competitive career, which continued until November of his twentieth year. By that point, though, he wasn’t jumping as consistently as he had in the past, so I didn’t think there was any reason to go on showing with him. He felt good, but he would just make a mistake at some point, and a lot of times, it was later in the course. That wasn’t his style. The pattern was obvious to me and those of us who knew him. He was losing some of his athleticism and endurance, which is natural when you get older.

We started to get him ready for Thermal in 2017, but finally said, “It’s time, he has nothing more to prove.” There was no indicator he would be better at 21 than 20, so we made the decision to retire him after a marvelous career.

Flexi now has babies in the United States and around Europe. I’m hoping someday I can train one of them and enjoy the type of fulfillment and success I’ve had working with this very special stallion, small of stature but large of heart.