Photo via ESJ
From Sally:
Have you ever wondered just what the officials do when the cross country is running? There is a whole under structure to an event such as Burghley that is seldom seen.
I have been lucky enough these past fifteen years to ride around cross country day with either the roving member of the Ground Jury who is out there looking for problems, or better yet with the TD who is driving furiously putting out fires as they happen.
It is imperative to know how to get from A to B without having to navigate through the 200,000 spectators milling around the course. You have to know all the short cuts. Otherwise you are tied up behind baby buggies, wheelchairs, packs of dogs, and running small children and you can make little progress.
One year we were just cruising before the first horse went out on course when we got a call for an ambulance 
”what the **** we haven’t even started yet”! Turns out one of the mounted police up by the Dairy Mounds had been roundly bucked off and was lying in a heap in the middle of the course.
These past few years have been decidedly more fraught. I was riding with Giuseppe Della Chiese the TD when we got the call that a horse had gotten himself hung up on the log at the top of Capability’s Cutting. We took off in grand Italian race car mode and went down under the bridge by the lake and started up through the rows of parked cars. There was a single roped lane headed up the hill. At the top was one of those huge Excavators complete with fork lift, obviously sent to help lift the horse off the fence. We started up the roped lane and as I watched the excavator started rumbling down towards us. Like something out of the Attack of the Giant Machines, “Giuseppe” I yelled “No one is driving the Bloody thing!” With lightning reaction Giuseppe flung the car into reverse and backed through the ropes into the lane of parked cars. The behemoth picked up speed, rumbled on by us and took out four cars at the bottom of the hill. Apparently the driver had got out without putting it in park.
By the time we got our breath back and made it up the hill the horse was off the fence and walking back to the stables. I am not sure how it went down on the TD report.
Last year we had a fall in much the same place but in the open after the fence. When we got there the rider was still down and being attended to. I held up a side of the screens. At this point you try to keep the rider’s groom, friends, parents etc. calm and assure them everything will work out.
This was a serious enough injury the helicopter was sent for. This meant that is was some 20 minutes or so of hanging on and keeping the faith. When the chopper arrived the rider was transferred by stretcher and lifted away.
The TD then set out to make sure the course was safe. But wait a minute! The local police constable on hand decided that maybe this should be declared a crime scene even though the rider had not been killed. The controller and TD were going spare. “They cannot declare a crime scene! There are 200,000 spectators out there and we need to get going ” The PC talked at length to his supervisor, who was based in Coventry over 30 miles away, and after what seemed like an hour but was probably more like 10 minutes it was decided to open the course. A collective sigh of relief from the control tent and the officials got us going again.
This year who knows? As long as I have been doing this, which encompasses the entire fifty years Burghley has been running, first as a competitor, as a coach, a judge, as a TD and as a steward, I guarantee one thing….something will happen which has never happened before!
