Aside from FEI rules, Australian time conversions are one of the most complicated things on Earth–the minutes don’t even match up. At 12:10pm Thursday on the East coast of the US it is 3:40am Friday morning in Adelaide. John Lechner of the Eventing Safety Blog is traveling to Adelaide soon and sent us this quick report before his departure. Be sure to follow John Lechner on Twitter @JohnVacy. Thanks for writing this John and thank you for reading.
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From Eventing Safety John
There is no Air Horse One in Australia and the Adelaide Four Star is 870 miles from Sydney, 1680 miles from Perth, 450 miles from Melbourne and 1305 miles from Brisbane so last weekend instead of competing those riders heading to Adelaide packed their trucks, and set off to drive the long way to Adelaide.
I know the riders from Sydney traveled in a convoy of 2-3 trucks at a time and dd the 19 hour trip with one main break in Hay. Hay is really in the middle of nowhere and is about ½ way. They will let the horses off the truck at the showgrounds and crash for 5-6 hours sleep and drive on, aiming to basically complete the travel in about 24 hours. It was grueling so the aim was to arrive early Monday or Tuesday so that the horses can recover and get in back into final preparation.
One saving grace for the 2010 Event is the weather will be much kinder. Last year, I was in Adelaide as Assistant Technical Delegate (TD). During the 6 days I was in town, the daytime temperature didn’t dip below 102 deg F. On XC day it was 102 and on stadium jumping it was 106. It was hot and very dry, thankfully no humidity as we were almost at the safe limit for competing. The XC course was shortened to 8 minutes and some very serious veterinary procedures were put in place including some brilliant cooling at the finish.
10 tonnes of ice was used to cool the 80 odd horses, the team of vets, helpers, grooms and anyone with a spare hand was charged with cooling the horses and riders as rapidly as possible, I know only one horse took more than 10-12 minutes to cool which is astounding but a great demonstration on how well we know how to manage our horses.
In that extreme heat, both Stuart Tinney and Wendy Schaeffer started three horses on the four star track with Stuart bringing all three home safely, Wendy had a couple of incidents but all horses were fit and well. Some of the riders, Wendy and Stuart included were instructed to undergo similar rapid cooling after each ride.
I know that the grooms took real pleasure in pouring buckets of ice water all over the boss’ head, all in the name of cooling, of course.
The Jog (we call it the Trot Up) was held here today and it looks like all 23 horses passed and the horses will begin Dressage at 10.40am Friday local time. I will catch a quick flight to Adelaide (only 90 mins) Friday morning and I will be ready and waiting for the first horse – Balmoral Cavalier with Emily Anker on board.
I know that Hamish and Dave will be in town filming so I plan to turn the tables on them and interview them. Any questions you want me to throw at them email me at [email protected] or tweet me @johnvacy. Catch you all tomorrow.
–John Lechner
