Sunday, 05 May 2024
To round off UK Coaching Week 2024, we bring you the tale behind how a coach helped a young rider fulfil an almost inconceivable dream. As a youngster growing up in Singapore, Caroline Chew fell in love with riding and horses despite the country not being very equestrian and she came to Europe to make it a reality alongside her studies.
She met Matt Frost, a British coach who had a skill at getting the best of any rider and with the tools to learn, develop and have fun along the way. Together they’ve both been on a journey of adventure – from the highs of representing her country at the Asian Games to being eliminated for a technical rule at the Tokyo Olympics Games, they’ve stuck together. As she bids to go to a second Olympics this year in Paris alongside her full-time job as a lawyer in London, we caught up with them at the Royal Windsor Horse Show.
Matt: About 12 years ago, I got an email from Dr. Melanie Chu asking if we could have her horses on livery because their daughter, Caroline, was going to university in Bristol, which started it off. I’d met Melanie and Caroline previously when I was in Denmark working in a sales yard and they came over to buy some horses.
Caroline duly arrived with four schoolmaster horses, with the main aim to go to the Southeast Asian Games, and the Asian Games, which is at small tall tour level, alongside her studies.
We started off on that path well. And then Joey (Tribiani) came along, who was is probably a horse of a lifetime for all of us as a team. He was aimed for the Southeast Asian Games and then went on to Grand Prix. So, the Olympic Games, World Championships and World Cup Finals followed.
Caroline: I think the honest answer is no! You always watch Grand Prix riders and think ‘I want to do that one day’, but that's a bit abstract and it’s in the wishful thinking category.
I started riding in Singapore, but there’s not a very developed equestrian scene. I did a few training stints in Germany, but nothing super-structured and serious. I think bringing the horses to the UK made me realise I wanted to integrate riding into my everyday life.
I wanted to train properly and then see what competing on the European kind of circuit would be like, so I went to Matt for help.
Caroline: I think what we have now is the product of a long period of figuring out what works. To start, I'd only do weekends or three days a week, and I think that was probably the toughest time because it was very hard to be consistent. Now, I do one week with him and one week out. The weeks I'm up there, it's just a bit more intense and I ride every day. Then, the week I'm not there, Matt rides the horses. He actually schools them in the areas that we've been working on, so it feels continuous.
Matt: We've grown to get to know each other through time really and, when we met, I'd never coached on this level before, so it was new for me and we had to just go and experiment – see how it went at various shows, what we could do differently while she was getting to know Joey at that level as well. We came up with a really good formula with him that worked. I know Caroline well enough now that I can school the horses, even though we're very different in size!
Horses are so brilliant and the two that we've got now are fantastic, so I can ride them how she would and get a feeling of how they are and what to do. Caroline's a brilliant pupil too – I'll tell her exactly what to do and she'll do it!
I try to set the horse up a bit to respond in a certain way so that I can coach Caroline how to get the response, which tends to work very well. We're very lucky with the horses as well because they're two very kind, talented horses.
Caroline: I think the main thing, beyond the dressage skills, is I think it's about keeping things in perspective and who to listen to at what point. We’re out competing all the time at the moment trying to qualify for the Paris Olympic Games and you’re going to encounter different people, different judges, etc. Because we've got such a strong system and such strong working relationship, I can focus.
He definitely doesn’t hold back. If there are things to improve on, he’ll be tough, but then he's also very clear on what's just a bad day in the office and then we move on and try again.
Caroline: Well, he's very blunt! But I'd rather he was honest – that’s what ges the results, right? We want to achieve a lot and I think ‘a tell it like it is’ method is needed. He’s completely committed to achieving our goals. Last year we went to Florida for months, which was a great learning experience but Matt was commuting by plane for most of that, which was hard but he never gave in. We give it all equal measure to get the results
Matt: She's very responsive and I find her very easy to teach because she's super-intelligent. I would say I'm very truthful and direct, but there's no point in hiding. I can be very blunt with her, but I we have a lot of laughs too – you'll probably see it when we're working in at a show. We're probably laughing quite a lot because I think that's a really good environment to learn in when you're relaxed.
And, you know, that's what you want as a coach. What I try to do with everybody is to make fun learning, make it easy, make it understandable and that success is just a lot of hard work and repetition. For me, what’s key is that good students see that sometimes when you fail, that's the biggest time that you learn.
Caroline deals with the highs and the lows brilliantly, and I think that's because she's very good at her job as well. We obviously had a massive disappointment [in Tokyo when they were eliminated for blood] and the way that she handled the whole situation was probably the biggest point in our career so far. I thought she was amazing and I think that was also a good learning for me.
We get along so well, largely because there is such mutual respect. I'm a bit silly, and she sometimes gets at me, but we understand each other. We've got such respect for each other and she's not afraid to tell me that that doesn't feel right. We’re good at evaluating and then working on where to go next.
I'm also not afraid to say, "well, that didn't work, let's try something else". I think, as a coach, that’s something really important that you can do and be honest and admit I'm not going be right all the time.
Matt: It's got to be that chemistry – that's something that I think you have to have. Make the effort to build to build up a relationship but, equally, use different people. I wouldn't say go and have a lesson with a different coach every week, but I think it's important to bring other people in and you can learn from everybody and what works for you as a coach.
Caroline: As a rider, you build up your own toolbox of exercises and techniques that you do and that's not necessarily from one person, but be open-minded. Try it. And if it works, keep it. If it doesn't work, try something else.
I think it's important to realise the sport is difficult and there is going to be very challenging times, so find someone who's not just about supporting you when you're improving and everything's going well, but to help through the tough times, too.