How Does Todd Minikus Teach a Horse to Win? Presented by Draper Therapies

Todd Minikus and Quality Girl. PC: Sportfot/TIEC

Much of high performance show jumping is in taking each microscopic step of a complicated dance to the perfect rhythm, and leading your partner through the steps with complete trust. It’s years of choreography: from learning to finesse a stride to applying the right proprietary poultice at a certain time of day with a flawless bandaging job. It’s every little step, every proper intuition, every magic formula, and even then a whole lot of luck.

But even a legend like Todd Minikus will tell you that to create a true winner, there’s a next, final, important step that can’t be underestimated: Trusting the horse to follow their own intuition, and encouraging a desire to win. Such was the case at Tryon yesterday, when Todd and his star mare Quality Girl won the $6,000 Nutrena 1.40m Power & Speed CSI 3* at Tryon.

Todd admits it’s not as if the class was on his list of “must wins” with a little less than a $2,000 payout for the winner, but as part of a training process, letting a horse find its pace and desire to win can be the final ingredient to a winning weekend when the big class comes around.

“This was just a schooling round for most horses,” commented Todd  after the winning round. “With that being said, the way I school Quality Girl is to let her just go for it. She’s been out of the ring for a long time, and when she did come back in, she did several big classes. Because this is a smaller class, sometimes the horses have to practice being the winner, to be the winner.”
It will be one of many rides that Todd puts in this month with a full string present at Tryon, and we’re eager to see what cream rises to the top for the Pan American Games veteran at the WEG 2018 venue.
“It looks like everybody is off to a good start this week.” finished Todd. “There are some nice horses here showing at Tryon; we have some of the big names out here for the CSI3* and it should be a good week.”
Keep it locked on JN for more coverage from Tryon, and Go Jumping!

Todd Minikus relies heavily on good technology to keep his horses strong and sound, and believes in the necessity of assisting circulation in his horses. As such, he’s an advisory board member to Draper Therapies, which sells numerous products with Celliant material, shown to increase circulation in the contact zone. See their full product line by clicking below.