Clarke Johnstone on XC, pretty sure he isn’t in ECOGOLD, yet!, Photo thanks to Rachel Smith, Furdography
What I would like to write is “another bloody Kiwi wins an Aussie Event” but I can’t. Clarke Johnstone is a member of the next generation of riders and in fact is part of Gen Y, the group we always give a hard time for lack of respect, lack of commitment and a complete avoidance of work.
Clarke represents none of those things, he is probably one of the most centered, respectful and hard working 24 year old’s I have met (except perhaps EN John). I had the pleasure of meeting both his parents on the weekend and it is easy to see where Clarke gets his attitude from.
So what I have to write is “Congratulations to Clarke Johnstone and Orient Express, for taking on the best riders and combinations in Australia and coming up trumps”. We all know that Eventing is about all three phases and this weekend at the end of each day we had a different leader.
Friday night’s dressage culminated in a fantastic test from Tim Boland and GV Billy Elliot to lead the dressage from Shane Rose on Taurus. In fact the top five also included Clarke, closely followed in equal fourth by Chris Burton on HP Leilani and Heath Ryan on Mystery Whisper.
Chris Burton and HP Leilani, photo thanks to Franz Venhaus
Dressage in the indoor at SIEC is always interesting and unfortunately it was a little bit too exciting for Emily Anker’s mount Keniski who decided that he really didn’t want to perform in the arena and poor Emily had to retire during her test.
Saturday morning started well with the 1* horses leading the day in the beautiful sunny Sydney weather. Unfortunately we had some action in the World Cup class with Kiwi John Twomey coming to grief rather spectacularly at the bounce into the water. John and Wade Equine Flaunt It got to a really bad spot at the A element of the bounce and while they cleared it they crashed into the B.
John landed on the downhill slope into the water before Flaunt It crashed into him heavily. Thankfully due to the quick actions of some bystanders and the emergency teams John was treated at the scene before being transferred to hospital.
I was very impressed with the handling of the situation both during the incident and afterwards. The committee ensured that when they had updates on John’s progress that public announcements were made, this is very positive and avoids the rumors that occur in an information vacuum.
I obtained an update on John’s progress earlier today and instead of interpreting and paraphrasing I will just give you what I have.
John, as at 0900 today, was doing well in Intensive Care. His injuries were:
Closed head injury and concussion, facial fractures and contusions, contused
lungs, small haemo-pneumothorax, posterior dislocation of his hip with a
fracture of his pelvis / acetabulum.
He was taken off the Ventilator at 11 am yesterday and is continuing to
improve.
He will likely go from Intensive Care to a normal ward tomorrow.
I know that the thoughts of the whole Eventing community are with John and his family at the moment and we wish him a full and speedy recovery. I spoke with the vets about Flaunt It and he showed no signs of any major injury and should be fit to compete long before John recovers from his dislocated hip, that has got to hurt.
Thankfully John’s incident was the only major one of the day and all other horses and riders were free of major injuries.
Sunday morning saw two more withdrawn, dressage leaders Tim Boland and Billy Elliot and poor Emily Anker with her second mount Balmoral Cavalier.
What I love about showjumping is when we go in reverse order and the excitement builds, putting the pressure on the last rider, the leader. For Shane Rose the XC leader he had two of the best jumpers in down-under Eventing on his tail Clarke Johnstone just 1.1 penalties behind and Chris Burton 1.6 behind.
Clarke and Burto jumped perfect rounds and left it to Shane who unfortunately dropped the first rail and then a second later in the course to move to fourth place behind Stuart Tinney and Vettori.
Amazingly we ended up with almost a carbon copy of the Kihikiihi result in April which also had Clarke on Orient Express 1st, Chris Burton on HP Leilani 2nd and Shane Rose on Taurus in 4th. The only difference was Stuart Tinney taking out 3rd place instead of Clarke. Burto also took out fifth place at Sydney on Newsprint. Full results here.
Saturday night saw the return of Hamish and Dave for their Sydney After Dark Special. They hosted the Bareback Jumping competition. With only four entries we thought we may be in for a quick competition, well it wasn’t.
We had a mix of Eventers and Jumpers in the ring, including bareback Jumping specialist Jess Staling. Jess and Rhys Stone got over 160cm before their horses had enough and were declared joint winners but the runner up stole the show. Natalya Bretherton and the horse was Impressive Kitty jumped 140cm. Neither horse nor rider had ever jumped more than 105cm before, they started the bareback at 120cm.
Watching from the sideline Natalya looked terrified but thanks to the encouragement of the crowd and one brave and honest horse she won the hearts of the crowd. She also managed to place 12th on the PreNovice (which here is 105cm or 3 foot 5 inches), so a great weekend.
Finally, our mate Hamish is seriously considering Burghley after having a great time at Rolex. He told me that the experience was amazing and with Tiger in the States already a Burghley trip won’t be that costly so it is only early days but we may see HamoNoDavo at Burghley, fingers crossed.
Yours in Eventing
ESJ
