It is not every day that you have the chance to ride with a two-time Olympic gold medalist. Riders lept at the opportunity to train with British eventer Tom McEwen during his January 2025 clinic at Galway Downs Equestrian in Temecula, California. Each of the sessions began the same way with McEwen quietly observing the riders warm up, followed by a question: “What do you reckon?
“It’s not a trick question,” he assured. Instead, it was meant to get riders thinking on their own. How did their horses feel? What were their horses doing? Falling in through turns? Falling behind their leg? Ignoring or overreacting to their cues? What were they doing with their seat, their upper body, their hands, legs and brains?
As riders, thinking on our own is the first step to acting on our own in the moment. “By the time I say something it’s far too late most of the time,” McEwen said of his in-the-moment coaching style. “We can’t affect the here and now. We can only affect what happens next. Then, when the rider starts thinking, it’s trying to get them to not overthink it.”
Balance was key in this conundrum and in distinguishing between the rider’s and the horse’s jobs. “I never blame the horse, but at the same time, the horse can and should learn to register some things for himself,” McEwen explained, noting that this is especially true for young horses. “If you start doing everything for them, they won’t learn.”
Simplicity Is Key
It’s the rider’s job to create “the right ingredients”—a balanced, rhythmic canter with power-generating hindquarter engagement and a straight track. The jumps are the horse’s job. The rider should make minimal movements and generally stay out of the way at the jump. When set up properly, most horses will figure out what to do with their bodies when given the chance.
Being a thinking, competitive rider starts with the course walk. Simple stride counting doesn’t cut it,
McEwen said. “We need detailed thinking about how we’re going to ride each part, i.e., ‘I’ll need right leg here to keep his shoulder in.’
“The reason top riders make it look easy is because they’re not doing too much,” said McEwen, who’s known for his smooth, forward riding style. When their horses have the correct training foundation, “We can make tiny adjustments at the higher levels because we’re not doing a bunch of other things.”
Trying to do too many things at the same time is counterproductive for horses and riders. “Keep training simple,” he suggested. “If you flicker between trying to do five things at once, you get nothing done.”
Organized by four-star eventer Taren Hoffos, McEwen’s clinic consisted of six divisions. The participants ranged from Beginner Novice to Intermediate and included pro, amateur and junior riders. One of those juniors, 16-year-old Fiona Lempres participated on three horses. One of those horses was quite familiar to McEwen: MHS Brown Jack, who McEwen competed at the CCI4*-L level in 2023.
Hoffos rode in the clinic’s Novice division with her 6-year-old Kermit. “I hoped for new exercises and ideas to build on his strengths and address his weaknesses,” she said. “Tom picked out our weakness right away—getting Kermit’s feet moving more quickly, making Kermit work a little harder and making me work a little harder to make him work harder.”
By Sunday, “I felt like it all came together,” Hoffos added. “Kermit was more in front of my leg, which allowed me to do better in the exercises in terms of looking ahead and riding off my leg.”
Focusing on Straightness
McEwen’s jumping exercises tested riders’ dressage chops on short course segments. Saturday’s focus on show jumping included long approaches to single fences. “One of the hardest things is to come straight to a single fence,” McEwen said about straight-approach fences followed by a bending track to the next jump. Angling isolated elements of one- and two-stride combinations was another challenge.
Whatever the track, McEwen noted that straightness in the horse’s body and setting and holding a straight line to the jumps were the goals. He added that the rider’s eye is critical. “Your eye tells the horse everything he needs to know about where he’s going,” McEwen said. “When he follows your eye, he gets stronger and can learn to do more things himself.”
McEwen increased the difficulty level for Sunday’s focus on cross country with brushes, skinnies and a corner fence interspersed with stadium jumps in the Grand Prix Arena. Three poles set as a curving bounce reminded riders to let the horses figure things out at the jump. After its use as a warm-up exercise, this component was integrated into longer exercises to reinforce that point.
Curved and angled tracks remained, but everything came up quicker. Success required creating and maintaining the correct canter, identifying and holding their lines and sighting the next fence once horses and riders were locked onto the immediate obstacle. V-poles on the ground or sloped out from the top of a standard helped horse and rider stay focused on skinnies, which helped improve the shape of several horses’ jumping efforts.
Attentiveness to the Rider’s Aids
It was a cool weekend, and an atmosphere that spurred high spirts in several horses. Whether hot or lazy, all horses improved focus on their riders through transitions, and many hotter horses settled down.
Keeping horses guessing with multiple in-exercise canter-trot-canter transitions brought several into softness. This also helped horses and riders work together rather than against each other. Rollbacks and bending lines on course served the same purpose in making the horses wait and stay tuned in to the riders’ cues. With steady, even hand and leg aids and a light, neutral seat, riders could let the tracks do much of the work in keeping their horses in balance and attuned to the next jumping effort.
Even riders on the freshest horses were encouraged to let them go forward in pursuit of relaxation. McEwen had two riders shorten their stirrups to encourage them to get off their horses’ backs to let them gallop a bit.
Forward, however, did not mean out of control. Halting before and after the fence in a smooth, no-drama manner worked wonders for one especially spirited mare.
Circles served a similar purpose of tuning the horse in to his pilot’s cues. Getting the horse to bend around the rider’s inside leg—applied evenly against the horse’s rib cage—helped create hindquarter engagement and canter balance as well as encouraged horse and rider breathing and relaxation on course.
One mare had consistently fallen into the turn approaching a jump set five to six strides perpendicular to the rail. However, she stayed nicely off the rider’s inside leg after several circles on course. The resulting approach to the jump was balanced and straight, and the fence itself was jumped in good form.
The only time McEwen doesn’t recommend circling on course while training is when the horse has locked focus onto the next fence.
Finding the Horse’s Ideal Canter
The clinic was all about training. Therefore, McEwen told riders to evaluate their efforts by the quality of their canter, not whether the fences were jumped clear. He advised fine-tuning between one- and two-miles per hour increments to feel for the horse’s ideal canter balance and impulsion. That resulted in a faster than normal canter for many. “People feel safe when the horse goes quieter and slower, but when you go up a gear, that’s better for balance,” McEwen said.
“More canter equals more options,” he continued. “With a slow canter, the only option is for your horse to draw up.
“Travel with your horse,” McEwen encouraged on landing from a fence. He told riders to build their canter after the fence and through the first part of the turn. Then, they use the second part of the turn to balance, keeping their leg on to maintain forward motion.
Position Pointers for the Rider
McEwen stressed using right and left hand and leg aids together to give the horse the clearest, most effective instruction. These organized aids help gain the horse’s confidence and trust.
His body-position pointers emphasized “tall head”—the feeling achieved by stretching up through the torso while staying light in the seat bones. When things go haywire on course, “it’s nature” to assume a deep-seat position—tilting the pelvis forward in drive mode.
Instead, McEwen wanted riders to develop the habit of going to the leg when extra forward encouragement was needed. This position helps the rider sink more weight into the heel for more security in the saddle.
One Size Does Not Fit All
Before riding her Preliminary mare Miss Tique, Mickayla Howard had ridden two horses for whom the two-part turn and faster canter advice “made a huge difference in keeping them in a good rhythm.” More pace was the opposite of what other coaches had advised for Miss Tique, but the Northern California trainer at Avon Eventing wanted to try it with the characteristically “forward and enthusiastic” 8-year-old Holsteiner.
“About halfway through, Tom said it would suit her better if we started to balance earlier in our turns,” Howard explained. “He picked up really quickly on what each horse needed, and it was nice to see that he didn’t have just one style for every horse.”
Just a week later at the Galway Downs Kick-Off Horse Trials, Howard and Miss Tique had their best competitive show-jumping round ever. “By balancing her earlier in the turn, I could almost lengthen my rein at take-off and she could use herself better.”
As a coach, Howard said learning to create the ideal canter in this two-part turn has already helped several students. “It’s a great method for riders who like a structured approach to their show-jumping course.”
In the pursuit of straightness, Howard said the exercises that helped horses move off the inside leg had been immediately helpful for her riders, especially those on hotter mounts.
Similarly, McEwen’s coaching was a game-changer for Alessandra Allen-Shinn and her 8-year-old off-the-track Thoroughbred, Bankseigh. “The rest of our [Intermediate] group was on warmbloods, and Tom pulled me aside right away to say, ‘Don’t look at them and think you are not doing well. Your horse was bred to go with his back flat and run.’”
In their two and a half years together, Bankseigh’s nerves in show jumping have been a major challenge. McEwen’s exercises immediately helped by making the gelding focus on using his feet and paying attention to Allen-Shinn. With better attention to her aids, Allen-Shinn could create more roundness and a better jumping shape.
That Happy Medium
The world’s top-ranked eventer said he enjoyed his first clinic in the U.S. and working with American riders. “There are general basics for everyone, whether you’re riding dressage or jumping. Everybody has to work on the basics, and that’s what we’ve been doing.”
McEwen acknowledged the difficulty of being a thinking rider without thinking too much. “It’s trying to find that happy medium,” he concluded. “If you just keep working on your basic principles, it gets better!”
Getting to scope out southern California was a bonus for McEwen. In a few years’ time, McEwen hopes to return for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games for a third run at gold medals for Great Britain.
To watch videos from the Tom McEwen clinic, subscribe to EQUESTRIAN+ (equestrianplus.com). Use code TOM15 for 15% off your first month’s subscription.
This article originally appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of Practical Horseman.
Thanks to Kent Nutrition Group and Blue Seal for our coverage of the 2025 Defender Kentucky Three-Day Event. It includes lead-up events, rider interviews, competition reports, horse spotlights, photos, videos and more!
