Well the kiwis jumped well but they were so far behind on points that medals were not an option. I think we can still be proud of them though. Showjumping is very controlled and precise and takes intense concentration to navigate the horse, check position and approach to each jump and take off at the right moment. The Beijing course was tough and they did well to not accumulate many faults.

Seeing Mark Todd and Gandalf jump made me see what the hype was about with Gandalf. I missed seeing them on the cross country but I now not remotely surprised they went clear in each. Gandalf clearly has the stamina despite the demands of the dressage and cross country in the days before. He is a very solid, honest horse who seemed to me very easy to just guide and point at the jumps, always knowing where his feet were. I didn't for a minute doubt Mark's ability to pick a good horse but Gandalf's dressage as I said before lacked some flair but Mark is confident he has room to improve so I look forward to seeing more of Gandalf.

Sugoi looked gorgeous as he went round but his head strong, feisty-ness let him down once again. If he had just listened to Heelen he could have easily gone clear. Heelen did very well with him as it was clear he was trying to do his own thing throughout most of the round. It will be interesting to see how he develops too.

Lenamore surprised me. A couple of times I saw Caroline almost battling to pull in before a jump, which she managed well but unfortunately it was Lenamore not realising what was being asked too late that took the poles down. I had picked Lenamore as a much quieter horse after the dressage performance so it was a but of a surprise.

Snip's performance was also a real surprise. His impulsion wasn't quite right, he was quite messy with his feet and he failed to jump high enough several times. The difference between his jumping style and the cross country signalled that he seemed tired, maybe he had been a bit unsettled since the cross country or maybe the two previous phases took it out of him too much.

Looking back at the three phases I have to say I am very impressed with all the horses for different reasons. The riders did a superb job and I really feel for Andrew Nicholson and all the replays that have been going on of all the other times he nearly made it. He is a real credit to NZ equestrian and we all know what it is like to have nearly had it in hand only for something unfortunate to have happened.

I caught only some of the cross country rides yesterday from the NZ team. I was leaving the dentist and saw Heelen Thompkins and Sugoi begin their run. Sugoi showed the same temperament as he did in the dressage, eager to do his own thing periodically meaning Heelen had to bring him back to focus on her instructions. Given this, I was not surprised to see his refusals as the Olympic course is technically difficult meaning that horse and rider have to balance speed with focused precision. Sugoi just wasn't listening or focused from what I could see at crucial moments which led to the refusals. I still think he is a great horse though, he just needs to get over himself.

The only other ride I saw was Andrew Nicholson and Lord Killinghurst. It was a spectacular ride, the stuff of real professionals, both horse and rider knew what they were doing, were focused and ripped through the course. The commentator seemed surprised that Andrew was cutting corners and taking risks to cut down his time faults but I wasn't as you could see the harmony between horse and rider. Lord Killinghurst was focused, his experience shone through. Andrew clearly knew him enough to know how much warning he needed and the horse was solid and true and rose to the occasion.

Their fall right at the end of the course was not the fault of either horse or rider, it was just an accident brought on, from what I could see, by Lord Killinghurst simply tiring and maybe Andrew relying just a bit too much on him knowing what he was doing and not telling him clearly enough they had a tricky double approaching.

When you are physically spent but still have the last bit of the race to go you just start blindly hurling yourself to the finish line, the precision and technique you had at the start of the race starts to go, you can see the end, you are nearly there. It seemed like that for Lord Killinghurst, he looked really tired but he just kept going, his ears were still pricked forward he was giving it everything but his feet were getting just a little sloppy and that combination right at the end was a tricky one as the lines of the jumps whilst parallel had to be approached from an angle, making the timing of take off just that harder to calculate, the jump was narrow and solid at one end which invites a horse to veer to the side and skip the jump (as I saw a few horse do on that jump) and there was only one or two strides between the two which proved to be their downfall as the they cleared the first one messily but had no time to recover before the next. The fall looked awful but thankfully both horse and rider appeared unharmed. It was a real shame as Andrew was on target to have one of the fastest clear rounds and they had all but nailed it too.




I did not see any of the other NZ riders but I hear that Gandalf and Mark Todd jumped clear but were slow which maybe says more about Todd's break from competitive eventing than anything negative about Gandalf who clearly jumped well. I found after a 15 year break from eventing that when I got back into it my nerve was the slowest thing to come back. My knowledge was still there, I knew exactly what to tell my muscles and body to do, my fitness and muscles strength was slower but before the accident it was getting there but my nerve is shocking and has been the hardest thing to counter. Prior to the accident I still had momentary freaks as I approached high and technically difficult jumps and I especially had trouble taking them at the speed that is needed to beat the clock. I heard Mark Todd say in an interview that in the past 8 years he hadn't really jumped anything much less the height and complexity of the jumps at his level of competition.

I was not surprised to hear that Joe Meyer and Snip had the best cross country round. I said previously that Snip looked like he could jump. Snip retains his position as my favourite NZ Olympic horse.

I meant to post this ages ago but I have been waiting on the accompanying photos. In a recent post I alluded to Madeleine winning her last equestrian event (pre-car accident). In the last few years she has resumed her sporting interest in horse riding and when our daughter Sheridan bought her horse Trogdor the Burninator (Troggy for short) and had some behavioural problems with him, Madeleine took him on and got him sorted out.

Troggy appeared to not have had any jumping or showing or eventing experience and as Sherry wanted to do pony club Madeleine taught him how to jump and entered him in a couple of events. At his first event, a darby day which is cross country jumping mixed with show jumping stations, they were placed 5th. Which was pretty good for a first outing for Troggy and for Madeleine's first outing in 15 years.

A few weeks later though at the Massey One Day Event (ODE) an event comprising of a Dressage test, a Showjumping round and Cross Country jumping round Madeleine and Troggy found themselves placed second in the Dressage. They went on to jump clear in the showjumping and clear in the cross country. The rider ahead of Madeleine at the close of the dressage did not ride clear so Madeleine won first place.

Here is Madeleine following the prizegiving with her Blue Dressage Rosette and her Red First Place Overall Rosette.

Here they are clearing the last jump of the Cross Country, securing their win.

Madeleine had hoped to compete on Troggy for the rest of the season and to have brought him up a couple of levels for Sherry but the car accident has put this on hold.

I am supposed to be online surfing trade me for summer horse covers but I am mad so I came here instead.

I am mad because I don't want to spend money on a horse cover our horse does not need and, well probably mostly, I resent being made to do so by some idiot who is contemporaneously wielding power and ignorance and has our pony club and all its members backed into a corner.



You see our horse, Trogdor (that is Trogdor the Burninator or Troggy for short - thats him above), does not need a summer cover. He is a well covered, thick skinned, healthy horse with a coat in good condition meaning he naturally has everything he needs that horses for centuries have used to stay cool in summer and warm in winter - and besides he lives in Auckland where it just doesn't get cold (well compared to Dunedin where we recently vacated - I would have to daily break the ice on my horse's water trough through winter down there!) and add to this is he is an Arab cross bred - gee I wonder how the horses in Arabia survived all that desert... so he only gets covered when it is the middle of winter and it is wet and frosty and even then mostly because we are sooks.

This is best practice equine care.

I could bore you stupid linking to endless sites advocating "the natural horse" approach to equine care but basically the gist is that if a horse is in good health and is not too old or too young then they coat will aerate or sit flat to let heat in or out depending on the conditions and only in extreme conditions do you intervene with nature - most of the time if you spend mega bucks building your horse a shelter he or she can stand under you will find him happily out in the blinding rain (or snow as in Dunedin) or sweltering sun ignoring your shelter in much the same manner he is ignoring the weather.

Enter the stupid, moronic animal activist.

He has decided that all the pony club horses are being neglected because they don't have/won't stay under "adequate shelter". He will report us to the council for animal abuse if we do not immediately ensure our horses have cover from the sun and have pony club shut down. (Did I mention the pony club occupies several acres of prime waterfront Auckland real estate which seriously GRATES the council?)

As the horses will not stay in the shade and move around the paddock as they graze (anyone would think they were coping perfectly fine with the sun) our only option to prevent the wrath of the council and to get this idiot of our backs is to put covers on them. This will make the horses hot, sweaty and miserable and will cost us money and will increase the risk of the horses coming to harm in the paddock by way of cover strap breakage or getting themselves hooked on fences and trees, etc. But hey, what would the two vets who wrote opinions on our behalf and us experienced horse owners know compared to some jumped up idiotic animal rights activist?

He actually rejected the vets opinion on the grounds that he "did not consider one of them to be credible." When asked which vet was not credible his response was, "I don't want to name him because I don't want to risk being sued for slander." Hello! You are only at risk of slander if you are talking crap, if it is true you have a defence.

So here I am looking at forking out at least $30 (for the crappiest option on the market - yeah I know, its not that much but its the principle!) for an item I don't need that will make my horse uncomfortable because of some nut-job who knows he has us all over a barrel because he knows the council will leap at the chance to get us off the land we lease from them but still dares to call himself the advocate for animal rights.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Madeleine