Meet Ian Cast - Dressage coach, confidante, best friend, and mentor to Olympic gold medalist Charlotte Dujardin.  Hear his story from taking Charlotte on as a teenager and their journey together through to Gold at the London Olympics in 2012, Rio in 2016 and hopefully on to Tokyo this summer. Ian has some superb insights into coaching at both a recreational and high performance level, and his passion for his trade and sport shine through.

Timeline:

• 2.26     Learning about Dressage - Ian fills us in
• 3.45     Becoming a dressage coach
• 6..46    What gets you out of bed in the morning as a coach?
• 8.58     Recreation versus Performance
• 10.00   A typical day
• 12.04   Coach both horse and rider
• 14.15   Introducing Valegro (Blueberry)
• 17.15   Borrowing from other sports
• 20.28   The Charlotte story
• 29.48   The Olympic journey begins
• 32.28   Some of Charlotte's challenges
• 36.41   'Same old s**t, different arena'
• 37.27    Personal highlights - the thrill of London
• 41.03    Repeating in Rio and 'doubling up'
• 42.13    Tokyo
• 50.51    Giving everything to the client, training the horse sympathetically, being the 'rock' & leaving no stone unturned

Notes and credits:
 This episode was recorded over Zoom during the March 2021 pandemic lockdown.
 Music: John Bartmann (CC BY-SA 4.0 Attribution-ShareAlike licence).