Jenny Sheppard at last year’s Weekend of World Cups, Bareback JumpingWhile everyone in North America and in Europe get over the their Badminton and Rolex hangovers we are in the middle of a huge week of equine sport in Sydney at the Sydney International Equestrian Centre or SIEC as we call it.
SIEC is the former Sydney Olympics Equestrian venue and is utilized almost every weekend year round, only Bromont and Sydney remain as former Olympic Equestrian venues still in use.
As I write this much of the world is still reeling about the demise of Osama but we know that as Eventer’s, Rolex is still very much in our minds. Mary King did something amazing a 1st and 2nd at Rolex and a 3rd at Badminton all in 10 days.
Congratulations Mary and to everyone who competed in these two fantastic events and had both good and bad days, thank you for sharing your passion with the Eventing world.
To my mate Hamish, well done, I know the result is not one that anyone would have wished for. But you completed Rolex in some pretty tough conditions. I have heard that the feedback from those who saw both Badminton and Rolex this week that the Rolex XC was as tough if not tougher than Badminton. Now that is tough.
Anyhow I am here to write about Sydney, the event is called the Weekend of World Cups. We have just finished a big weekend of Dressage with the Sydney CDI on while we were all focused on Rolex. See the winner of the freestyle below Rachel Sanna.
As for the Weekend of World Cups, we have a round of the Eventing and Jumping FEI World Cup Rounds happening as part of the same event. What that really means is we will have non-stop equine action.
Eventers from around Australia and the odd Kiwi including the NZ round winner Clarke Johnstone will be putting in their best efforts to be in the money on Sunday afternoon. I will be there and will try to bring the action to you in my spare time while I TD.
The Jumpers will add to the action and a bit of fun. Much like the Reining was the Saturday night entertainment last weekend, this weekend it will be the “bareback jumping”. Last year it was won by a young horse competing in a baby national class on the weekend, hopefully we can convince Hamish to put down the microphone (he commentated last year) and show off more of his skills.
This video was buried in the mass of awesome Rolex coverage and needed to be seen again
I know that Chris Burton will be working hard (he has three horses entered in the World Cup class) to get one over his young mate Clarke, after being beaten by him on the other side of the Tasman only four weeks ago. The entry list reads list a who’s who of Aussie based Eventer’s. The World Cup Dressage is on Friday night, XC Saturday and Jumping Sunday afternoon so it will be fun-filled.
For those of us here with Jumping all three days, XC running on both Saturday and Sunday and everything else packed in around the sides it will be fun. As for reporting I am going solo, leaving the laptop at home and going to have a crack at running my coverage and FEI TD reports purely from my iPad. I think this will be challenging but I need to know if I can do it.
In September I will be traveling to the UK for Burghley where as part of the FEI’s Global Education Program I will be part of the TD team, this is awesome and very exciting. In addition, I will be hanging around for the following weekend where I will be heading to Blenheim which will be the Olympic qualification event for a number of Nations including Australia, South Africa and Japan, all vying for a spot in London 2012.
I will be at Blenheim for EN bringing the coverage direct to you all weekend and I really don’t want to carry the laptop for that trip, hence the test drive this weekend.
Yours in Eventing,
ESJ
