Lessons from watching a top rider walk the course

The first time I really paid attention to how a top rider walks a cross-country course, I was standing in the boot scraper line at a Melbourne event with my helmet crooked and half a muesli bar hanging out of my mouth. The rider in question wasn't anyone I knew personally, just a name on the start list with results that read like a highlights reel. She was walking the course with a quiet focus that made me stop fidgeting and start watching. Every stride, every combination, every slight rise in the ground got her full attention.

What struck me most wasn't her technique so much as her patience. She spent ages at the corners and the water complexes, walking the lines from multiple angles, sometimes crouching low to read a shadow or the way the rails sat against the brush. I'd walked courses before thinking of it as a perfunctory chore, a thing to tick off before the warm-up. Watching her turned the walk into the main event, the part of the day where the ride quietly gets decided.

Since then I've tried to slow down at every event I ride, whether it's a training day at the Werribee Equestrian Centre or a bigger fixture further afield. The lessons I picked up that morning have reshaped how I prepare, how I ride, and how I think about risk when my name goes up on the board.

The walk is where the ride really begins

Watching a polished rider walk a course is a bit like watching a good trainer read a horse's body language before they touch it. They don't rush. They let the course tell them something. The rider I observed all those years ago didn't stride purposefully between fences like I was used to doing. She meandered, doubled back, paused and looked at the same jump from two different angles.

One thing she did that I now copy is to walk the line, then walk it again at the canter in her head. You can almost see the gears turning as she imagines the rhythm her horse will need to take off, the place she'll ask for half-halts, the spot where she'll rebalance. By the time she gets to the start box, she's ridden the course two or three times in her mind.

I also noticed she talked to herself quietly, or maybe to her horse. She would whisper things like "sit and wait" near a drop, or "keep the rhythm" by a combination. It wasn't for anyone else's benefit. It was a way of leaving instructions for herself, the kind of self-coaching that turns a technical plan into muscle memory once the flag drops.

Reading the terrain like a map

The Australian eventing scene has its own flavour when it comes to terrain. A course in the Adelaide Hills feels completely different to one in the open paddocks of the Hawkesbury or the sandier footing up near the Sunshine Coast. Watching an experienced rider walk, I realised she was reading the ground the way a bushwalker reads a topographic map.

She paid attention to subtle camber changes, the way a downhill approach might pull a horse onto his forehand, the soft patch of ground on a landing that might tempt an enthusiastic horse to jump long. She walked past the water once on the correct line, then circled around and walked it again from the opposite side, checking where the exit sat relative to the next fence and how the light was hitting the water's surface.

That second perspective is something I now treat as non-negotiable. The first walk gives you confidence. The second walk gives you a plan. And the third walk, which I used to skip because I was nervous and wanted to get back to the lorry, is where you actually start to make decisions that suit your particular horse.

Pace, rhythm and the numbers on the board

One of the most underrated things a top rider does during the course walk is pace out distances. She did it with the kind of unhurried precision that made me feel like I'd been winging it for years. From the top rail of a combination to the bottom rail, from a brush to an oxer three strides later, she counted out loud and marked the distances mentally.

Under Equestrian Australia rules, the optimum time and the time allowed are posted well before the walk, and the difference between them can be significant at bigger fixtures. Watching her pace the course with those numbers in mind made me realise how often amateur riders ignore them until they're halfway through. She knew where she could afford to gallop and where she had to sit up and balance.

She also identified the breather fences, the lines where you could give your horse a moment to recover before the next effort. In a country where you might drive six hours between events, and where the summer heat at fixtures like the Sydney International Three Day Event can drain a horse within a round, those breathers are pure gold. The walk is where you find them and decide how to use them.

Mental rehearsal and visualising the ride

There is a moment during a top rider's course walk that I find quietly moving. They will sometimes stand completely still in front of a fence, eyes half-closed, riding it in their head. Watching it for the first time, I assumed they were tired or distracted. Now I understand they were doing exactly what sports psychologists keep telling amateur riders to do.

Mental rehearsal works because the brain doesn't fully distinguish between imagining an action and performing it. When she stood there visualising the stride, the takeoff, the landing and the balance to the next obstacle, she was teaching her nervous system what to expect. By the time she actually rode it, half the work was already done.

I started doing this in a small way at an interschool event in country Victoria, and the difference was startling. I walked the line, then stood at the start box for a full minute just breathing and picturing the ride. My mare felt calmer, I felt calmer, and the mistakes I usually made from rushing were nowhere to be seen. It doesn't replace the actual preparation, but it complements it in a way that nothing else quite does.

What amateur riders can take from the pros

The point of all this isn't to suggest amateur riders should copy elite programmes move for move. Most of us are juggling work, family, Pony Club rallies and the reality that our horses are not four-star machines. But there are a few practical habits worth borrowing from the top riders I've watched.

First, slow down the walk. Allow yourself at least forty-five minutes per course and resist the urge to sprint through it because someone else is. Second, walk the difficult questions twice, the ones that worry you on the first pass. Third, pace your distances out loud, even if you feel self-conscious. Fourth, leave a small window of mental rehearsal time at the start box, even if it's just ten slow breaths. And fifth, walk with someone who rides at a similar level and discuss what you each saw.

The walk isn't a chore to tick off before the warm-up. It is the warm-up, and a great deal of the ride that follows. Once you start treating it that way, the day feels different, your horse feels different, and the way you carry yourself between fences changes too.

If you're planning your own run of events this season and want a sense of how I'm laying out my year, you can see my competition schedule on the blog. It's where I work out which events to aim for, which to use as schooling, and where I'll be parking the float on a long weekend somewhere between home and the next fixture.