Given the catastrophic issues raging in another equestrian sport, the Kiwi eventing community are lucky that the only thing apparently exercising them at the moment is whether or not Andrew Nicholson should be reinstated on the NZ performance squad, after an altercation in a very fraught situation that any other grown-ups would have sorted out on the day.
For those who have not followed this saga, Andrew himself has since publicly admitted that he indeed “did his nut” at the team vet, Ollie Pynn, in the stables at Haras du Pin after the WEG cross-country. There are slight variations in theories as to why Andrew was upset, but the official line was that Nereo had been left unattended on a drip and thus exposed to interference from unknown parties.
The altercation went further than a slanging match and Ollie subsequently resigned from his team role, as did Kiwi performance manager Sarah Harris. Along with manager Erik Duvander, she then lodged an official complaint about Andrew, which was withdrawn after Andrew withdrew himself from the squad in October.
By December, Andrew offered an olive branch and indicated he would like to be reinstated. But when the new squad was announced in January he was left out. This is massive news down-under. Following media frenzy and further talks with Andrew, the NZ federation may now accept him, when the squad is next reviewed in June, subject to his agreeing to a “bond” regarding his future behaviour, the terms of which we don’t know.
I do not, for one moment, condone abusive behaviour to anyone or anything. I can also imagine that it is deeply unhinging to be accosted by an angry Nicholson, especially if you are not immediately sure what you are supposed to have done. But equally it is not news that Andrew is a volatile character –he’s 53 and isn’t going to change now. This is was the sort of scenario that arguably should and could have been predicted in the unusually high-octane environment at Haras du Pin.
It was clearly hell on cross-country day. If we, the mere press corps watching the carnage on monitors were saying to each other, “Crikey, Nicholson will be going ballistic,” then it’s reasonable to assume that team management should have twigged that Andrew (by then in individual medal contention) was, above all people, going to be a very short fuse indeed, and livid that all competitors, not just himself, had been obliged to expose their horses to this unfit-for-purpose course. I wonder if a bit more lateral thinking and proactivity by the support team could have headed it off at the pass? I am not saying Andrew should have “special” treatment because of who he is; but he should have “tailored” treatment. That is what management is about. If every rider was perfect in every way then managers would be surplus to requirements.
I would not imagine Andrew is very demanding in most other respects, because he has forgotten more than the rest of us will ever know on how to choose, ride, jump, fitten a horse and make split-second decisions about how to salvage the situation on the very rare occasions he meets a fence on a wrong stride, etc., etc., ad infinitum.
For as objective an account as is feasible to get, I am inclined to rely on this Facebook post by Annabel Scrimgeour, a long-time aide of Nicholson, British List 2 dressage and FEI eventing judge. She has decades of experience of what it’s like in the stables after a fraught cross-country day from both rider and officials’ points of view.
Annabel wrote: “Nobody was expecting him [the vet] to be there the whole time, but regular checks (sic). Remember this is a different situation to a horse getting fluids in a clinic during the course of the day. He [Nereo] was late in the day to run so it is even more important to get the job done quickly and efficiently so the horse has time for rest before the trot-up the next day, earlier than usual as they then had to travel to the sj venue [from Haras du Pin to Caen]. It is not like he was rushed off his feet. Two [NZ] horses had gone home, one had jumped six fences, another was out of the competition and the individual horse had competed earlier and was finished and put to bed.”
There is a cliché that no-one is bigger than the team but, actually, it’s not true in the modern era. If niche sports like ours are accepting millions of dollars of public money, it is the duty of said subsidized teams to win the medals their fellow countrymen believe they are paying for. That means selecting the very best horses and riders, even if some of the personnel can be awkward cusses. The UK program pays for leadership and motivational courses etc., which surely assist with inter-personal skills.
The Kiwis have some spectacular younger talent, and Jonelle Price has displaced Andrew as world number two. But it remains a fact that the best Kiwi team members at WEG 2010, London 2012 and WEG 2014 were Andrew and Nereo (Jonelle was higher placed at Caen, but riding as an individual). World rankings and recent four-star “form” don’t necessarily deliver results at global championships. Having the world number one rider and horse on the squad did not exactly help the British show jumpers in Caen.
We’ve all heard of the flawed genius. John Nash, Vincent van Gogh, Edgar Allen Poe and Sir Isaac Newton subjected long-suffering colleagues and family to extreme mood swings. The Berlin Philharmonic produced peerless music under the baton of Herbert von Karajan, a tyrant who terrified his players. The Daily Mail once ran a special feature on “your favourite flawed geniuses in sport.” Poll-toppers included soccer stars Diego Maradona and Zinedine Zidane (whose violent temper resulted in 14 red cards), John McEnroe, Tiger Woods and the hell-raising cricketer Ian Botham, who nowadays is regarded as a British national treasure and has been knighted by the Queen.
Compared to these, Andrew is a boy scout. Of course he’s had the odd warning and unofficial slap on the wrist for berating officials over the years – but warnings and yellow cards are dished out like confetti in FEI eventing anyway. The irony is that he got an official warning in 2006 for kicking up a real fuss about the footing at a three-star, when the reality is that most riders rely on Nicholson to do something about cross-country and/or horse safety issues, because no-one else wants to blot their copybook by being the one that speaks out.
He runs a clean ship. There is a popular theory that his horses are not-very-randomly selected for sampling because of the certainty they will test clean and so help keep the FEI negative results for eventing look good. Has he ever been accused, even by anonymous cyber bullies, of horse abuse or dubious training methods? Of course not. Indeed, the world and his wife hung on his every word during his training clinic at the recent International Eventing Forum in the UK. Was he officially reprimanded or interviewed by the French police about the incident at WEG? Not as far as anyone knows. There may be more to this than meets the eye, but as the Kiwi federation has neither confirmed nor denied any of the much-published speculation, we are entitled to assume we have the picture.
The phrase “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” springs to mind. The altercation, while regrettable, was obviously not so dire that any kind official kind of discipline was warranted. Hence, the worldwide court of public opinion seems to prevail. It overwhelmingly wants him on the squad.
