In the six years he’s been conducting clinics at USHJA Emerging Athletes Program National Training Sessions, Peter Wylde has taught many students the ins and outs of equitation. This year, the 2004 Olympic U.S. team gold medalist (Greece) is imparting his wisdom upon a new group of eager and talented program finalists.

EAP Nationals, held for the second consecutive year at the University of Findlay (Ohio), sees 16 finalists—selected from ten regional, qualifying clinics—take part in an intensive and comprehensive training program.

Over the course of three days, Nov. 13-16, the young students have the opportunity to ride in a clinic with Wylde; learn about equine physiotherapy from Janus Marquis, who serves as the physiotherapist for the U.S. show jumping team; listen to a lecture by leading equine sports psychologist Kip Rosenthal; and more. They are assigned a horse to ride, feed, groom and care for throughout the weekend with the assistance of stable manager Anne Thornbury.

EAP Nationals is also held in conjunction with the USHJA Horsemanship Quiz Challenge, where 13 of the highest scoring individuals on regional- or national-level handwritten horsemanship quizzes come together to be tested on their knowledge of a wide variety of horse-related topics once again. At the conclusion of the weekend—after participants complete both a multiple-choice test and a practicum component—individual and team winners will be announced.

Today was all about the basics for the 16 EAP riders who were just getting to know the mounts they’ve been assigned. As each group of four horses and riders began their session by flatting, Wylde instructed on topics such as transitions and lead changes.

One exercise he focused on in the beginning of each session was extending and collecting the canter.

“Sit, collect and ride the inside bend as you’re collecting,” said Wylde. “Don’t just sit and pull to try and get them to slow down. When you’re extending, get up off their backs and let them move a bit, then bring them together as you move into a downward, collecting transition. Sit back down and make him wait for you.”

Making the horse wait was advice Wylde was keen on imparting to the young riders—especially if they were atop hot or energetic mounts.

When Phillip Williamson was having a hard time getting the right distances to fences on his quirky horse Wendell, Wylde suggested that he make the horse wait to the fence.

“The distance was coming up a little bit short,” said Wylde. “To help that, you could’ve gotten a little steadier earlier, waited a stride and a half away from the jump, waited a little bit more, softened up a bit and then jumped it.

“Really have flexibility and softness in your arms and your fingers as you’re making him wait for you,” he instructed another student, Kavita Sinha, with a similar issue aboard Ace. “The horse is being a bit hot and quick, so everything has to sort of be underdone and smooth to compensate.”

Starting off by jumping a simple, small crossrail on a circle, each session transitioned to navigating bending lines and a bounce before moving on to jump a course. The course included an outside oxer-to-vertical line that the young riders had to jump to the left in six strides, then again to the right in five.

Wylde’s philosophy on finding distances revolves around trusting your instincts and planning ahead—without over-thinking and getting in your own way. He explained that often when we come up to the jumps without sufficient preparation, we psych ourselves out, saying, “I really need a big distance here,” and we end up getting a short distance, or vice versa. So instead of “making it dramatic,” as Wylde puts it, he suggests riders “ride what they see.”

“You need to start thinking about riding a [combination] in advance so that when you’re coming up on it, everything is set up and it’s effortless—you don’t see this big change or this big move. That’s what makes great riders. That’s what makes [Beezie Madden] so great—because she makes it look like she’s doing nothing, but there’s so much involved. What she’s doing is preparing in advance to make it look like it’s just happening.

“I say, you can get [the horse] in front of your leg, but [on the approach] ride what you see,” he continued. “Reorganize, bring him together and then ride what distance you see.”

And if you find yourself landing from the first fence in a combination and don’t immediately see the distance to the next, there’s no time to think—you just have to ride.

“We can’t always control that distance coming in because our eye doesn’t always work perfectly for us, but if you’re coming to the [first jump], no matter what, you have to know when you’re leaving the ground what the distance is to the next jump,” said Wylde. “Your brain needs to be saying to you, ‘Oh boy, this is too deep a distance for this [six-stride] line, I have to work twice as hard to fit the six in from the first stride when I hit the ground.’ It’s too late to wait two strides until you see that distance in the line and then go. You have to force yourself to believe in the six strides even if you don’t see it. The best way to ride a line is to get the work done early by shortening or lengthening your strides [right after landing the first jump] so that you can free yourself and your horse up to jump the [second] jump.”

In the coming days, the finalists will continue working with Wylde and their assigned mounts, and will compete in a Nations Cup-style competition Nov. 16, to put what they’ve learned to the test.

“I think this was a really productive day,” said Wylde. “It went really well and I see a lot of talent here. I’m excited to see what’s in store for tomorrow when some of the horses are a bit less fresh.”

Emerging Athletes Program Finalists:

Bailey Fuller, age 21, Tulatin, Ore.

Emma Glaunert, age 15, West Lynn, Ore.

Abigail Graham, age 18, Colorado Springs, Colo.

Lucy Hart, age 20, Lexington, Ky.

Caroline Johnson, age 17, Grafton, Mass.

McKenzie Kasper, age 15, Alpharetta, Ga.

Abigail Grace Kelley, age 13, Denver, Colo.

Megan Kerpsack, age 16, Austin, Tex.

Elissa Ostroff, age 18, Portland, Oreg.

Halie Robinson, age 18, Santa Barbara, Calif.

Dani Roskens, age 18, South Lyon, Miss.

Kavita Sinha, age 20, Houston, Tex.

Nina Vogel, age 16, Los Angeles, Calif.

Carly Williams, age 19, Lexington, Va.

Phillip Williamson, age 19, Denver, Colo.

Cody Wooten, age 20, Eldersburg, Md.

Can’t get enough advice from the professionals? Want to follow along with the finalists and their progress? Check out all of the Chronicle’s online coverage of EAP Nationals at chronofhorse.com.

Get more information about the Emerging Athletes Program. 

Get more information about the Horsemanship Quiz Challenge.