First day of an Olympic year. Nothing exciting in the offing today, but like stable workers the world over, most of us are moving slowly this morning. Horsey folk tend to be early to bed and early to rise, and on those celebrated occasions when they are not early to bed, they are usually still early to rise. I personally gave up the struggle about 15 years ago. I was born Scottish, and wild celebration at Hogmanay is a prerequisite when one is younger. Now I am a Canadian and getting a few years on board, I have allowed myself the privilege of going to bed before ‘the bells’.

As soon as I woke up this morning the first thing I thought was, this is it, 2016, an Olympic Year! I don’t know whether it’s exciting or it’s the stress that makes my stomach flip. I know the year is going to be intense. I know that every success and every failure will have consequences. I know that in the end it will be just Woody and Selena out there, but in the beginning it takes a village!

Selena and Anne Marie will leave for Florida this month. I am incapacitated by knee surgery at present, therefore, Anne Marie and Selena are living a more than hectic lifestyle getting everything organized and prepared whilst doing all the tasks in which I would normally be involved. I read somewhere, Facebook probably, that at their core “Horsemen are problem solvers” and almost every day and certainly every week, I think how right the author was. Our problem solving skills at O’Hanlon Eventing have been well tested this past few months.

The best news I heard over the holidays was that Andrew Nicholson and William Fox-Pitt were both improving.

Two of Selena’s 2014/5 rides have been sold. ‘Bloomsday Leo’ and ‘Thunderstruck’ have both been lucky enough to find wonderful people who are taking them on to the next stage in their careers. They are both going to live in America and we are looking forward to seeing them scooping up the ribbons with their now owners in 2016. Our perfect little mare, ‘Watson’s Cydney,’ also found her own perfect human in 2015 so horses were getting a bit thin on the ground! We have been looking for months to buy just one new youngster for Selena to bring along – of course, when the right horse came along, two of them came along on the same day…..so…..we have TWO new horses.

We would like to wish Happy Birthday to our two new horses, both OTTBs. One is five today, ‘Rumshaker,’ and the other is a growing four-year-old. ‘Benny’ is a big boy and still growing. We hope to take Benny and Rummy to the Thoroughbred Makeover in 2016 in addition to introducing them to eventing. They are both rather beautiful and we are very excited about the future with this handsome athletic pair. Although we have had them since the beginning of December, these video clips are the first time they have had tack on. In a perfect world we would like to take Rummy to Ocala this winter and Benny will stay home and continue to eat, sleep and grow into himself. They will both be re-backed next week.

Rummy was not long off the track and he is still a little lean and anxious. He is well mannered and gentle to work with. He is very smart and rarely has to be shown anything twice.

Benny has never raced. He went into training and was too slow from the first breeze. He is a sweet horse, the trainer we bought him from had bred him and it is very obvious that he has never had a bad day in his life. He is easy going and relaxed about life, likes to eat and lie down lots, most of all he likes to lie down AND eat.

I hope you are going to see and hear a lot about these two. We are syndicating them in 2016 and I will be keeping track of their progress here on our blog. If you have not already done so, please join our Facebook page.