THIS is our first time to compete at the Winter Equestrian Festival in Wellington. We were actually planning on coming last year, then with Covid-19 and everything getting cancelled, we were worried if we came all the way out here and it got cancelled, it would be a disaster. So in the end, we didn’t come and all the big shows in Europe were cancelled so I was stuck at home and everyone out here was jumping away at a good level, so I decided we would definitely go next year!

The way it is working out, a lot of the five-star shows in Europe are being cancelled again this year, so it was a good decision to come and to be able to keep jumping every week up to four and five-star level. There are a lot of options here for the horses – there are so many classes from Tuesday to Sunday every week, on grass and sand, so you can really tailor a horse’s schedule.

I have four horses here with me; they are Jasco vd Bisschop, Cap West, O’Hara ELS and the Irish Sport Horse mare GRS Lady Amaro; and my wife Charlotte [Swedish international show jumper] brought two horses.

Family time

That is one of the nice things about being here… I am not flying off to a show every week, we can be here for two months as a family, with the two children. And we are escaping the cold weather in France, where our home stable is, so we are extremely lucky to be able to come here and have two summers in one year!

We have rented stables in a friend of ours place, based in Palm Beach Point which is quite close to the show. We can hack the horses to show if they are jumping the national classes. It is very nice for the horses, to hack over to the show grounds, jump the class and then hack home again.

We have rented a house here too and the two boys are going to day care, they started last week. The older boy asked me for a soda the other day…they are getting into the American way already!

Good start

I had a great start with second place in the four-star Grand Prix on week three with Jasco vd Bisschop. The horses hadn’t jumped since Geneva so it was good to get off to that positive start.

It is a different atmosphere here under the lights for the big Grands Prix. We do have the odd show under lights in Europe, but not very many so it was quite impressive for horses. It is quite dark everywhere else and when you go into the ring, it is very very bright.

Also the jumps are different here, the poles are bulky and long, which is very different to Europe. Jasco was a little bit spooky for the first few jumps but settled well.

This week is the first five-star and I will jump Jasco in that, alongside Cap West. The plan is to alternate between the two of them to jump all the five-star weeks here. Cap West (10-year-old) is ready to step up to that level now; he did a few five-stars well last year.

Exciting mare

I am very excited about GRS Lady Amaro (Amaretto Darco x Over The River). She is a nine-year-old mare bred by my cousins William and Patrick Hickey at Garryrichard Stud in Wexford. Patrick was based with me for the past year until the end of last summer and he had the mare with him. I saw her a lot and really liked her so we decided to buy her. I think she is going to have a big future. She was already placed in ranking classes as an eight-year-old; I will use this Florida circuit to build her up and get to know her.

We have left a lot of horses at home at our stable in Viry, France to come here. There are two yards – the young horses stable and the show stables – but we have a great team taking care of them. My rider will do gymnastics once a week with my 12 horses, and build up a bit more fitness before I get back so they will be ready to go back to the show while the bunch I have here will have a break.

The goal in the back of my mind for the year is of course the World Championships but it is very early in the year yet. We will see how Jasco goes for the rest of the circuit, and if he feels good, we will be aiming for that.

I am part of the Madrid in Motion Global Champions League team for the last four years. That is always a big goal too and I am looking forward to it this year, I feel I have more horses that I ever had, so that is exciting!

Mark McAuley was in conversation with Judith Faherty.