25 – 2* 120km at Taupo – to qualify!

In order to fulfil the World Equestrian Games criteria to be eligible to enter I needed one more two star.  After that would come the much harder task of fulfilling New Zealand’s selection criteria, but one hurdle at a time. 

In my usual obsessive fashion I have kept a lot of emails, which I have now been re-reading for the first time in ten years – interesting!  When you start trying to get on squads you get access to people who can help, but also pressure to perform according to their criteria.

So you have IPP forms to fill in – Individual Performance Plans – initially I found these very difficult.  Not so much that you need to have a plan, that’s always good, and I don’t mind sharing my plans… it’s just the forms themselves.  There are boxes, and you’re supposed to fill in every box.  And sometimes that’s ok but other times you end up either just stuffing something in there that isn’t right or useful just to put something in, or stressing for too long about what should be in there.  E.g. rider fitness, plan – turn dog walks into dog runs, who will help you – Teagan (dog)… I mean who else is going to help me with that? !!  So there were several emails looking for help to fill in the damn form!  I only did the actual form once, after that I just emailed an update for each category and what my plans were and how they were going, that I can do.  After all what they were really after was knowing I had my act together and was on track.  I had to confess when everything was over and they question you about it all that the IPP forms do work, by writing things down and having other people see it you are much more likely to achieve those goals.

One thing that came out of correspondence with High Performance was that the emphasis was very much on the big rides – FEI and Champs – and that at club rides we should be building fitness and putting together a team that were committed to helping Lace and I get to Kentucky.  This team were to practice hard at crewing, lag times were the key and even at club rides attention would be paid to teamwork and lag times.  If you’re riding slower at a club ride then your lag times will be expected to be correspondingly quicker, no shirking for your crew.

Another thing that was good to know was that winning was not that important.  They were interested in a team, and only one horse can win a race, good times were important but thrashing your horse to win against other potential team members was not in the best interests of performance at Kentucky.

So it was clear that we were going to be watched… all the time.  They also made it clear that it was not just performance of you, your horse and your crew during the ride but also behaviour at all times, conducting yourselves in a professional manor.  Yep, they were watching.

So, off to Kuratau to get our 2*, this was now the second ride at this course and so we were looking forward to it.  This year Kerry was going to get to ride too, we had bought Henry as a joint project and he was coming along nicely.  He was always totally of the opinion that all terrain was canter-able, so he was going to enjoy this course, still novice though so would not be allowed to enjoy it too much!

Angela was also hoping to be selected for Kentucky, and we rode the whole 120km together.  Lace was beating Shah into the vet ring every time, and using my knowledge learnt from watching Mark at the Nationals, Lace and I made her chase us down each time and we discovered how much fun it is to canter out of base in front!

The rest of the time we rode along together, looking out for each other.  I could tell she was determined though and knew she was going to go hard out at the end.   

Coming toward the end of the last loop we were still together, for a while Angela had been asking leading questions, trying to get me to tell her my plans… actually my plans were to absolutely NOT gallop finish, because

1) Kerry would kill me (!)  

2) completing the ride successfully was priority, taking home a red ribbon instead of a blue one was not (in New Zealand red is first, blue is second), and

3) HP had said winning wasn’t important, sensible riding and good lag times were.  But I wasn’t going to tell Angela that! 

So with about 2km to go Angela started to speed up, to keep up the illusion we were going to fight her for it Lace and I went with her a little, just to get her started!  Zoom, she was off!

Required two star completed with good lag times.  Although looking at this table I see that we could have done better, yes we were first into the vet ring each time, but we could have taken her in sooner.

	Distance (km)	Speed (km/hr)	Lag time	HR
Loop 1	40	18	2:20	55
Loop 2	40	18	5:27	56
Loop 3	20	16	4:59	60
Loop 4	20	18	9:53	60

Looking back now as I ride 19 year old Lace I am reminded just how good she was for a young horse with an inexperienced rider.  Which is perhaps how we ended up aiming for Kentucky, she of course didn’t know we were but we both were highly competitive and out to prove ourselves!

Kerry enjoyed the course and the ride on Henry as much as anticipated – golf course like terrain kept immaculate by sheep.  But there was a bit of drama with about 5km to go in the first loop (at least from where I remember her describing it and my memory of the course…so completely accurate!) Henry had injured himself.  He had a tiny cut on his leg that must have nicked an artery and blood was going everywhere – of course it always looks horrendous at that point… he wasn’t actually in any danger.  They continued home (after leaving blood stains by the trough to worry others) and vetted through fine…. “A for Legs & Hooves”, “Are you sure?”…. “What about the blood squirting out?”!!  He passed that vet check ok, but during the hold the bleeding still would not stop so he had to be withdrawn.

Both Lace and I now had the official qualifications required to enter the endurance at WEG, now we just had to be selected!