Rachael Green: Gridwork with former Olympic showjumping coach Jabeena Maslim

After she fell at Ffos Las at the beginning of November, I knew we had to do something to help her and had many sleepless nights trying to work out what we could do to prevent her from pulling so hard.

The former Olympic showjumping coach Jabeena Maslim lives just down the road from us and has always had an involvement in the jump schooling of our horses. We commandeered her and with Susie Leeson, who works on the yard and has an enormous collection of bits, we set about quietly working her in the school over series of grids using different tack to try and get her to come off the forehand and lighten in the hand.

Anthony’s father used to train The Dikler when he ran in point-to-points and he was a big, strong horse who always raced best in a Kineton noseband.

He ran in the Cheltenham Gold Cup seven consecutive years and won in 1973.

We tried this on Rouquin Sauvage along with a running gag and schooled her in this tack so that she could get used to it.

We used three jumps with a stride in between to try and get her to lift up in front.

Jabeena is not afraid to ask big questions and it is fantastic to have her on your side. She’s training the GB pentathlon team for Rio 2016.

She’s so talented and clever and knows just what a horse needs to help improve its performance. It took a lot of practice with Rouquin Sauvage but it was worth every second as she’s like a different horse now and really uses herself to jump.

Because we now have brakes, she doesn’t waste her energy on pulling and as a consequence jumps much better.

With my first baby due next year, I am not riding as a jockey at the moment which means I get very nervous when the horses are running.

It is very hard being a bystander! The horses now have various jockeys on their backs when they run so you have to do everything you can to help the horses.

Anthony went with Rouquin Sauvage when she ran at Lingfield and he called to tell me she had finished second. That call meant so much to me.”