The Day I Finally Conquered My Fear of Downhill Strides

There is a particular feeling that lives in the back of every event rider's mind when they look at a course map and see a steep descent coming after a combination. For years I read those lines and felt my stomach flip. The downhill stride was the one fence I never rode with confidence, and I would arrive at the top of the hill already calculating every possible mistake my horse might make.

The strange thing is that I had been eventing for a long time before I admitted, even to myself, that this single type of cross-country question was the one that took the joy out of my ride. I could jump banks, ride through water, and tackle narrow corners without much fuss. But the moment the ground fell away under my horse's hooves, my hands would grab and my shoulders would tip forward and I would hold my breath until the next flat stretch arrived.

I had been working with a coach based in the Southern Highlands for a few months when I finally brought it up properly. She had watched me at Melbourne area horse trials and seen me ride well everywhere except over the bigger undulations at Wallaby Hill. Instead of giving me another technical exercise, she asked when I had last ridden a real downhill drop in a schooling situation rather than hoping to survive one on course.

That question sat with me for a week. It forced me to realise I had been treating every descent as an emergency rather than a planned movement, and that the answer was going to come from my own preparation. What follows is the story of the lesson, the homework, and the moment it finally clicked for both my horse and me.

The First Time I Tried and Rode It Badly

My first proper attempt at a serious downhill stride was at a schooling day in the Adelaide Hills. The course builder had set a long approach across the top of a paddock, then plunged down a steep bank before sweeping around to a brush fence two strides out at the bottom. On paper it was straightforward, but in my body it was a disaster. I sat too far back, picked up my reins too soon, and effectively told my horse that I expected the worst.

He tried his heart out for me, but with my weight jammed behind the saddle and my hands closing around his mouth, he could not use his hindquarters properly. He half-jumped the drop, landed heavy on his forehand, and took a pull at the brush on the way out. He had done exactly what I had asked him to do, which was the problem. I had asked him to panic before he ever reached the question.

After that ride I sat by the float and wrote a list of everything I had done wrong. That list turned out to be the most useful thing about the day, because I had finally translated the vague dread I felt into specific physical mistakes. That gave me something concrete to work on instead of hoping the next time would magically be easier.

What a Downhill Stride Actually Is

A downhill stride is not really a single fence. It is a sequence: the take-off point on higher ground, the airtime over the drop, the landing on the lower slope, and then the recovery as the horse rebalances for whatever comes next. Most riders focus only on the drop itself and forget that the real work happens in the two or three strides that follow.

When the slope tips away from you, the horse has to shift his centre of gravity backwards as well as forwards. He uses his hindlegs to brake and push his body up under the line of the hill at the same time. If the rider interferes with that process by leaning back too hard, grabbing the reins, or pushing with the seat, the horse loses the ability to organise his own body, and the fence then feels rushed, flat, or unbalanced.

The lightbulb for me was when my coach walked me down the same hill on foot and asked me to walk back up. Going down, my body wanted to lean back. Going up, it wanted to lean forward. She pointed out that the horse had the same instinct, and my job was not to fight it but to support it. A small half-halt before the drop, a relaxed lower leg, and a quiet upper body was all I needed to give him.

The Lesson Where Everything Shifted

The afternoon everything changed happened at a quiet arena just outside Camden, south-west of Sydney, on a property that had been hit by rain for most of the previous week. My coach had set up a small drop into a shallow ditch on a gentle slope, then a placing pole a stride out, and finally a cross-rail at the bottom. Nothing was scary. That was the point.

We started with trot. My coach walked beside me and talked me through the rhythm of the canter up to the drop, the moment of suspension, and the rebalancing stride after the ditch. We did it six times in trot before she asked me to go up to canter. Each repetition she would say one word, "breathe", and I would exhale on the take-off. The first time I did it properly, my shoulders dropped about ten centimetres and my horse landed lighter.

By the end of the hour I had ridden the line maybe twelve times without a single moment of tension in my hands or my breath. I had learned what it felt like to trust the sequence instead of bracing for it. My coach laughed when I thanked her and said the next test would be doing it on my own, on a real hill, in a real schooling.

What Changed in My Body and My Breathing

The biggest change was not in my position, even though my position did improve. The biggest change was in the way I breathed. I had been holding my breath through every downhill question for so long that I did not even realise I was doing it. Once I started consciously exhaling on the take-off, the rest of my body followed. My shoulders softened, my elbows stayed supple, and my hands stopped travelling.

I also changed what I did in the two strides before the drop. Instead of gathering my reins and bracing, I let the canter flow. I kept a consistent rhythm and trusted my horse to find his own balance. The rein contact stayed light, the lower leg stayed long, and the weight stayed centred in my pelvis. When I did all of those things, the drop looked after itself.

The third change was the most surprising. I started talking to my horse through the sequence, a low, steady voice saying "good boy" or "steady" as we went. It kept my own breath regulated and gave him something to listen to besides the tension in my arms, and it turned a silent, anxious moment into a working conversation between us.

Practising on the Property Before the Next Event

I took my new skills home to my property in the NSW Southern Tablelands and started a weekly routine. There is a gentle slope in the back paddock that leads down to a small dam, and I built a tiny cross-country schooling lane along it. I set two simple portable blocks at the top, used the natural fall of the ground, and finished with a single log at the bottom. It is about as low-tech as you can get, but it taught me more than any fancy arena exercise.

I rode that line at trot, then canter, then eventually at a working gallop with a longer approach. I rode it on my own, on days when I felt confident and days when I felt tired, in the rain and in the wind. By the time I had done it twenty times, the muscle memory was strong enough that my body started to default to the correct position even when my brain was busy thinking about other things.

It also helped that my horse started to love it. He learned to approach the drop with a positive, ground-covering canter and began to land in the same rhythm every time. I knew then that I had not just fixed my own fear. I had given him a clearer set of instructions about how I wanted the question ridden.

Taking It to a Course at Wallaby Hill

The real test came a few weeks later at a Wallaby Hill event, just outside Scone in the Hunter Valley. The course included a true downhill question at fence seven, with a long sloping approach that had caught me out at the same event the year before. I had walked the course the afternoon before and felt the old familiar flutter as I stood at the top and looked down. I went back to the lorry, closed my eyes, and replayed my homework routine. Exhale on take-off, light hands, quiet leg, steady voice.

When I actually rode the line the next day, it felt completely different from the year before. My canter stayed with me all the way down the hill, my horse locked onto the trakehner at the bottom, and we landed on the far side of the brush with room to spare. I laughed out loud as I turned the corner, hearing my coach's voice in my ear. It was the first time I had genuinely enjoyed a downhill stride in competition.

I went on to jump clear inside the time and finished the day in the ribbons. The placing mattered, of course, but what mattered more was that I had ridden the moment I had been avoiding for years and come out the other side feeling proud rather than relieved. That shift in feeling is what every rider is really chasing when they go out to event.

Why This Felt Bigger Than Just One Stride

Looking back, the day I learned to ride a downhill stride without panic was really the day I learned how to be honest with myself about my training gaps. I had spent years hiding from that one type of question and hoping I would simply grow out of the fear, but I had to sit down, write down my mistakes, ask for help, and do the slow work of rebuilding my instincts one quiet schooling at a time.

I also learned that fear of a particular movement is rarely about the movement itself. It is usually about the way the rider has been handling it, and once the handling changes, the question changes. The drop does not get smaller. Your preparation for it just gets bigger, and that idea has changed how I approach every new fence from simple logs to the more technical combinations.

If you are sitting on a fear that has been quietly tagging along to every competition, know that the fix is almost never what you think it is. You do not need more talent or more luck. You need a coach who sees the problem clearly, a horse who is willing to try, and the patience to do the boring work on a quiet slope before you ever take it cross-country. You also need to look after the mental side of the sport, because eventing is as much about the rider's head as the horse's legs. There are some genuinely useful ideas out there about how to stay positive when your season gets interrupted when the runs do not quite go the way you planned.

Take this as your permission to slow down, write down the one thing you keep avoiding on course, and start there. The feeling on the other side is worth every quiet schooling afternoon you will spend.