I took Basil the horse to the Northside & Avondale One Day Event on 5 & 6 Sept. The 'One Day Event' (ODE) is actually held over two days; the dressage and show jumping were on the Saturday and cross-country on the Sunday.
We were in the lead after the dressage phase. I had a little drama in the show jumping warm up arena - I landed heavily on my ankle in the stirrup over a practice fence and wasn't sure whether I'd be able to put weight on it again in the stirrup! But after a couple of minutes my ankle went numb and we jumped a smooth clear round. That evening I couldn't walk and was couch-bound with ankle strapped, iced, elevated and dosed up on Nurofen!
I worried that I might not be able to walk the cross country course on Sunday morning, so was relieved to find myself able to hobble when I got up at the crack of dawn.
I walked slowly twice around the course on foot (I had to learn the course, work out how many strides I should ride between fences etc) and then flew around it on Basil the super horse to secure our victory!
I was thrilled to win it - Basil has been fed a lot of carrots in the last week!
If you're interested in learning more about the equestrian sport of eventing, there is a good article on Wikipedia. I only do the small stuff, we were competing at Prelim level, which in Australia means maximum jump height 95 cm, ditch 2 m and drops 1.2 m. The highest level of the sport involves maximum fence height 1.20 m, ditch 3.60 m and drops 2 m.
Lots more Basil pics here.
Congrats on the win! Well done. And thanks for the Wikipedia link. Seems like it takes a lot of work from both of you.
Posted by: Russell G | September 16, 2009 at 05:11 PM