“Event rider Bill Levett grew up riding in the wide-open spaces of Australia. He moved to the UK in 1994, and competed at his first Badminton soon after. We caught up with him ahead of this year’s Mitsubishi Motors Badminton Horse Trials.”
To find out more, go to Horse and Country TV (article mistakenly attributed to Victoria Spicer)…
“The great baseball player, Rogers “The Rajah” Hornsby once said, “People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”
Winter is a woeful season here on the west coast of Ireland. Storms tear off the dark North Atlantic, yanking down trees, stripping away roads. Any attempt to school a horse regularly is futile, and even the minor chore of walking to the stables leaves me rain-whipped, ice-cold, discouraged.
I tend to mope. I mourn. I see the dark side of things. I lose perspective. As the tragedy of another Irish winter unfolds, with its resonance of famine and plague, I forget that I am, in fact, just waiting for spring.
Practically the only thing that keeps me from leaping off one of the sea-bashed cliffs in front of my house is plotting my summer competition schedule. I slink round the internet, ogling the sites of summer horse trials… and the whole world brightens.
What goes into building these pleasure grounds? Who are the heroes whose dedication to natural obstacles and smooth turf makes my life worth living? I decided to find out.
Here in County Cork, we have a new cross-country course designed by the great Michael Etherington-Smith, designer for the Sydney and Hong Kong Olympics, the 2010 World Equestrian Games, the Rolex Kentucky CCI4* for the past 20 years, and many others.
After salivating over sunny photos on the website of the Millstreet Equestrian Centre, where the course has been built, I rang up Mike Etherington-Smith in a grateful mood.”
Then I published what I learned in Eventing Nation.
I know a lot of people who were looking forward to the World Equestrian Games 2014 in Normandy. They booked their tickets for the cross-country at Haras du Pin months in advance and flew thousands of miles to be there. Many of them were disappointed. Some were much more than that; they were raging. The logistical nightmare that some people experienced overshadowed the pleasure of seeing the best horses and riders in the world tackle a universally admired cross-country course. I was there, and it WAS a tough day – even though I was among the lucky ones – and an eventful one. I wrote about it for Eventing Nation.
What a joy to be at Dublin Horse Show – that great display of Irish horses and horsemanship, and the pinnacle of the equestrian calendar here in Ireland. I managed to poke my nose in all over the show grounds, stables and even the lorry park (where the barbecues were scrumptious), but I particularly enjoyed watching the Young Event Horse classes. I wasn’t the only one – the stands were packed – and even the judges, who included Lucinda Green looking elegant in an emerald suit and hat, seemed to be enjoying themselves… But who wouldn’t want to ogle leggy young athletes in the summer sunshine? Here’s my article on the classes, published in An Eventful Life (please note there is a paywall).
Trish Donegan-Ryan was one of the first people I met when I came to Ireland ten years ago… What a stroke of luck! I used to bring my young horse to Trish’s family yard in Bandon when the equine dentist was in town. One day, as we were taking a tea break in the Donegan family’s charming farmhouse, he told me a little story about Trish’s hands, which I’ve published in West Cork People.
Camphire International Horse Trials & Country Fair had its best year yet in 2014, with one-third more spectators and entries than ever before. Lucinda Fredericks, Joseph Murphy, Sam Watson, Camilla Speirs and Laura Collett are just some of the star riders who competed, alongside rising stars like Sophie How, American grand prix race car driver Elizabeth Halliday-Sharp, and the Under-18 Development Sqaud from Great Britain. The international field also included teams from Hong Kong, Qatar, Sweden and others. Whatever their results, everyone seemed to be having a great time, basking in the Irish sunshine in the magnificent Blackwater Valley in County Waterford. The mix of experienced and inexperienced riders competing alongside each other, while families and dogs enjoyed the country fair, having a day out – all in the spectacular setting of the riverside grounds of Camphire House – made for a celebratory atmosphere. It was one of my happiest summer weekends, and I wrote about it for Eventing Nation.
With record entries and a truly international field of competitors, excitement is building for Camphire International Horse Trials and Country Fair, which begins next week (24th – 27th July). Check out my piece in Horsetalk for all the details. Irishhorse.tv has also done a fantastic preview clip.
The hubbub of exciting debate at the recent Irish Sport Horse Strategy meetings around how best to improve the Irish Sport Horse industry inspired me to look to our competitors on the continent, to examine their best practices. The resulting three-part series, “Global Trade”, 3 May 2014; “Training for the Top”, 10 May 2014; “Going Dutch”, 17 May 2014, were published in The Irish Field (please note there is a paywall).
Here is an excerpt from part one, “Global Trade”, about best breeding practices on the continent:
“Although we may wish to learn from the continent, it’s important to remember that in some ways native Irish horses are superior to foreign horses – they are easier to keep, and easier to keep sound, for example. They learn quickly; they’re clever and have a “fifth leg”, as eventers say. We’ve already lost some of that, and we don’t want to lose any more. When a breeder at one strategy meeting said mare approvals are a waste of time and ‘you can take any mare from up in the hills and breed a good horse’, he wasn’t talking rubbish. He was talking about another era, when Ireland was full of great horses, before Ireland ‘sold her seed potatoes’. There are still superb Irish horses, and it’s important we don’t overlook their strengths in our eagerness to borrow what’s useful from the continent. We need to innovate – to blend the best practices and horses from elsewhere with the best of our own native expertise and stock.”
Marianne van Pelt 