1.) You started this years competitions in Dubai Maktoum Horse show, how do you describe the experience of competing with Arab riders? What do you dream of achieving in 2002, especially that you are getting ready for the World Championships in Spain?

I could not have asked for a better start to my competition year 2002, than the one I have had by beginning the year by competing in an Arab country. The UAE is beautiful, people have been so kind, and Dubai has so impressed me. The facilities for horses here are truly incredible. I have never been to a country in my life where horses are truly an industry. As a professional, it is such a pleasure to see how horses are cared for here, and how the sport of our grandfathers is protected and established, and how it has a solid foundation for furthering its standard of excellence. The facilities that I have seen are not only very beautiful esthetically, but from my point of view, they make it very easy to work as well. Attention has been given to the smallest details that are obviously instituted by a people’s that truly understand the spirit, psychology and physiology of a horse.

This year is very important to me, the World Championships will complete a list of participations that my father, god rest his soul wished of my career. He asked me to aim for the top, he told me if I aim that high, I might not achieve all I try to, but I would make him very proud. He named two events, the Olympic Games and World Championships. I have discovered most of the interesting aspects of my chosen sports through trial and error. One interesting aspect is management and targeting for a goal. The other is the psychology of an athlete, through my own experiences. I believe that the mindset of an athlete is paramount to their performance. Confidence is a thing that can be true and solid or paper thin. There are periods where moral differs depending on what stage you are in in training, and a competition agenda. I like others did not start preparing for the Olympic Games a few months before the event, I was looking at my goal seven years before it happened. We train anything from 5 to eleven hours a day to get there. Before actually competing there, I thought about something, if you take a minimum of five hours a day, and think of that over seven years, I trained and competed for 12775 hours minimum. I had three rounds in Sydney, three rounds at two minutes each in the ring is six minutes. I felt incredible pressure because I was desperate to show every detail of that training, 12,775 is the minimum, to justify that in six minutes is hard to comprehend. I stood at the gate in Sydney, before going in the ring, and it was so terribly lonely. I looked at a field with technical problems that left little room to breathe, and obstacles that were bigger than any I had ever jumped in my career, and the eyes of 4 billion people worldwide were on me. I was totally alone with my horse and I thought of all those hours in Ireland, Holland, Germany, freezing in the winter and crying at nights from pain in muscles and broken bones and homesickness. And I thought to myself, “After all that I am not going let this pressure get to me! I suffered enough to get here and I am going to fight in that ring.” I used negative thoughts to motivate myself. That does not make a winner only a participant. So after the Games, I looked at my next goal, I was on the plane coming back from Sydney when I started writing down ideas and observations from the Olympics that would make me win in my next goal. One observation was something I noticed about myself as a competitor. I had to use joy, and my love for horses, my passion for the sport and my competitive spirits to make my performance change.

If I would be in Europe now, I would be waking up at 5:00 a.m. in a city that’s dark, I would be counting the layers of clothes that I could put on to keep warm for a day of training in temperatures of minus 4 or 5. The horses would be fresh with the cold, and hard to ride. I would be homesick, and every day I would struggle to remember why I wanted to go to a world championships. I have done so many winters in Europe training I shiver to think of it. so I decided to come here. to compete in my own region. To feel the warmth of the sun, and be with people that I understand, who understand me, culturally. What I did not know and expect was that I would be able to use facilities far superior to those I have access to in Europe to prepare my horses also. I have watched the horses bloom since they arrived here. They are healthier and that has saved me time and work to get ready for the championships. When I stand at that gate in Jerez this September, I will be under pressure again, but at least this time I won’t be thinking of all the hard times I went through to make myself strong. I will think with pride that I come from a region with a solid foundation in my sport. When I think of the 4 billion faces that I don’t know watching me compete, this time I can think of the hundreds of friends I made here while competing in the Gulf, their kindness and their smiles, and I will use that to give me strength. That’s why I planned to compete here at the beginning of this year, I know I made one of the most important decisions of my career.


2.) What are the signs of intelligence in a horse, give examples from the arena?

Horses are both intelligent and intuitive. They speak a language that is not comprised of words but small physical movements that speak in loud volumes. A good horseman can look at another riders horse, and understand much about the person who rides him. If I ride someone else’s horses, I can tell nearly anything I want to know about their riders’ character. I will know if they are moody because the horse will be withdrawn and defensive to my actions, it will take me time to get them to trust me. If they are kind, then the horse will mirror that too. If the rider has a physical injury, a bad back, or is right or left handed the horse can tell me that too. I will encounter resistance through the horses’ spinal cord, running from his tail to his mouth that will show me a rider that is compensating for their own pain by holding their body weight differently. The horse will react to that balance by resisting in degrees. He will be inverted and more developed on the side that the rider is stronger. Even if I do not sit on another person’s horse, I can look at what he says. If I raise my hand and he throws his head back, I know his owner is unaware of his or her own body movements that they move without regard to an animal and that the horse is frightened. I can tell him to trust me in a process that can take seconds or days. All I do is slow down the movement of my own hand that frightens him, and repeat it, until he understands I do not mean to harm him.

If I meet a horse for the first time, I like to do it in an open arena, if I am establishing a long-term relationship the first meeting is as important as when you meet a new business partner. If they are free, they can use all their range of movements to talk to me. Horses come from herds. Their language depends on accepting you as their herd leader or deciding if you are part of their herd. When a horse trust and accepts you as the leader, they will stand showing you their body, and giving you access to their stomach area. This is their most vulnerable body part. If they where in the wild and attacked the attacking animal would avoid their hoofs and teeth by going for the intestinal area and soft tissue in the stomach. How they stand looking at you will show you if they trust you. A horse standing face on is giving you limited access to his volatility and vulnerability. A horse who lowers his head, and exposes his stomach is telling you he trusts you. If you know their movements and move in the same way, they will also understand you. I had to study this, but many riders and horseman, do this through gift.

Two other important aspects are the fact that horses use eye contact in various ways to talk. The other thing is that they move opposite to pressure than us humans. They move into pressure. And fly or run from shock or sound. Where as most humans if they are startled will turn and face what surprised them, and if someone pressures them physically they will step back. This is the easiest way to start a conversation with a horse. All you do is stand next to his shoulder and lean against him, he won’t move away, if he does for a second he will move back in towards you with more pressure. Try it its fun. The easiest way to talk to a horse is to try and understand his movements, the ones he repeats is what he is trying to say. If you want to have complicated conversations, then you have to watch herds, not only horse herds but gazelles and deer especially, their language is sophisticated because so few are truly domesticated. All you have to do is learn to observe. I think most animals were created with two ears and one mouth so that they listen more than they speak.

3.) Horses play a big role in the old days until machines replaced him. What is the role for horse and rider in our time?

We are in a age where science has promoted logical and deductive thought process. A complete human being depends on his deductive and logical mind, but also on his instinct and intuition. Horses communicate intuitively; they don’t need logic because they are pure souls. They don’t have concepts like truth or honour, they live those things, they are those things. They act and react instinctively, and they teach people to do the same. I have watched many young people come back from studies in the USA and Europe, my generation ahs many highly educated people, but you can tell which of them are far from nature. Their decisions are based on what is logic rather than relying on their instinct. We Arabs are people of the desert, we should not loose the ability to read nature. The earth talks to us, and horses can teach you to keep that communication open. It will help you in every aspect of your life, business, politics, and living in general. Horses show you how to keep in touch with your own soul, how to command your own energy, and how to live the truth rather than just talk about it. Competing with horses is just a demonstration of the level of communication you have attained. But for generation man has been served by this noble animal, and his most valuable service is ignored. A car will not help or teach you as a horse will. And technology will speed up the rate at which you can achieve. But a horse he will remind you to be happy to live, he will show you the principles of what you wish to achieve, and he will be a mirror to your heart and soul. The ways of our grandfathers, and our heritage to the desert, and to horses who were noble friends and true warriors, they will save the spirit of your children, from all that is ugly and evil. In Dubai I have seen that the ruling family are true horsemen, what they have built, is a protection of the same spirit I am talking about. The way they have built it, the details that have noticed reveals to me one important thing, they have not asked the question, “How can horses serve us in this modern age?” instead, the facilities and work ethic here shows me instead that they have asked, “What is that we can do to serve an animal that has long stood by us?” That only a true horseman can say.