Breaking news! These past few weeks have been chock full of critical results and life-changing circumstances.
Since my last column, the chairman of Equestrian Life magazine, Rob McKay, has retired and the magazine has been bought by Propel Group. Wow! Firstly, thank you Rob for all of your support, inspiration, vision and never-ending genteel approach in all policies and directions pursued by EQ Life. I feel honoured to have worked for you through the magazine.
Heading up EQ Life magazine is the original team of Sunday McKay as publisher and Adele Severs as manager of content creation. Both Adele and Sunday have been very good to me and I very much enjoy working with them. To Propel Group, welcome, this is all very exciting. Here we go on another great adventure!
TIME TO SUPPORT OUR VICHY TEAM
Since my last column, I have put my hand up to fundraise for three intellectually impaired riders who have been selected to represent Australia at the Virtus Global Games at Vichy, France, on 4-10 June 2023, just weeks away.
This team is $70,000 short. It’s a long story but one of the selected riders, Andrew Driffield, worked for me some 25 years ago. At that time there were a number of young, wild Australian boys such as Kevin McNab, Boyd Martin and Matt Ryan working for me. They were wild and tough, but they did adopt Andrew and he was very much a member of the gang! Kevin, Boyd and Matt have all gone on to win medals in Olympics and/or World Equestrian Games. Andrew embraced this dream of riding for his country and has been toiling away forever. None of us ever expected Andrew to achieve the dream of riding for his country. Well, this is a great example of don’t ever give up, and blow me down, Andrew has been selected on the Australian Virtus Global Games team. He is just so excited.
After the initial euphoria, the fact that these riders had to self-fund to attend the Games stressed out everyone involved, including Andrew’s mother, Libby. That was my cue to step up and look after one of my kids, as I remember all the riders who have spent time with me in the years gone by. I immediately told Andrew and Libby not to stress and I’d look after them in terms of funding. Me and my big mouth! The other two selected riders, Sui Watts from NSW and Sarah Sherwood from Queensland, also were short of resources. All three are fully paid-up members of Equestrian Australia. I felt terrible proposing to only help one rider and realised that I had to help all three. So, for all three to go to France with one parent each and associated costs such as hiring horses over there, $70,000 is needed.
Right now, we have a silent auction running with over 200 lots donated by a very generous Australian public, including our new Equestrian Life owners, Propel Group, in the form of RB Sellars gift vouchers. Thank you, thank you, thank you. These donations have a retail value of over $114,000. We are still uploading more donations and struggling with the workload. I should really say here that doing all the work is Mary Nitschke. I cannot even turn a computer on! Thank you, Mary! Anyway, is $114,000 worth of product enough to generate $70,000 in cash for the Australian Virtus team? I am stressing over that question. We do need active bidders. So, for those of you who have read this far and would like to peruse the silent auction, please click here.
The items up for auction are varied and there is something for everyone…
• A 7-night stay at a 5-star resort in Bali
• Top of the range saddles from both Bates and Saddleworld
• Top of the range rug packages from EQ Saddlery and Horseland
• Product from the team at Kelato
• Limited edition and one-of-a-kind items
• Clothing packages
• Equestrian packages ranging from leather cleaning to horse health kits
• Horse feed packages
• Lessons with Australia’s top-level riders and Olympians
• Kids’ toys
• Holidays all around Australia
• Wine tours, tastings and masterclasses
• Wine packages
• Artworks
The list goes on and on and on!
There is also a GoFundMe page available for direct cash donations. No donation is too small and no donation is too big. Click here to access the GoFundMe Page.
The auction closes at 6pm sharp on Friday, 12 May.
This is a very good cause and we would be very pleased if you could help us support the Australian Virtus Global Games Team for Vichy. We need to make that $70,000!
FROM TRAGEDY TO OPPORTUNITY
Since my last column, in the world of dressage the World Cup Final was held in Omaha, Nebraska, from 4-8 April 2023. This started off as a tragedy for Australia. The Pacific League World Cup final held at Dressage by the Sea at Willinga Park in February was won by Charlotte Phillips riding CP Dresden, owned by Jane Bruce. Ordinarily, this would mean they would represent Australia at Omaha, but the incredibly critical oversight was that horses going to the USA had to have their first Equine Influenza (EI) vaccination before the final at Dressage by the Sea.
“At very short notice,
they flew to the US.”
Of course, no one knew who was going to win there. This meant that although Charlotte on CP Dresden won, the gelding had not been vaccinated and so could not comply with US quarantine regulations. It was a massive and tragic oversight. Few of us have ever considered getting vaccinated and booking flights to a competition before you are qualified and selected. Charlotte is just 21 years old and this would have been a great contribution to getting one of our young up-and-coming Grand Prix dressage riders international experience. Tragedy.
On the bright side, however, already in the northern hemisphere and appropriately qualified and vaccinated was Simone Pearce and Fiderdance. At very short notice they flew to the US as a substitute and performed brilliantly. Simone scored 71.32% in the Grand Prix to be placed seventh out of 15 and scored 76.575% in the Grand Prix Freestyle to be placed seventh out of 13. Simone and Fiderdance were on fire, and I think that Australian riders scoring around the 71% mark in the Grand Prix at a CDI are going to be selected on the Australian team for the Paris Olympics next year, 2024.
Whilst we are talking about dressage and Australians scoring well, you have to mention Lyndal Oatley on Elvive, who scored 73.304% at Hagen CDI3* in Germany on 19 April to secure first place. If Lyndal can maintain this sort of standard, she will be sure to be picked for the Australian dressage team next year at the 2024 Paris Olympics. The Australian dressage team is qualified for the Paris Olympics courtesy of their eighth placing at the 2022 FEI World Championships in Herning, Denmark. This is not the case with the Australian eventing team. More on that in a moment.
There will be only three riders per dressage team at the Paris Olympics. So, if Simone and Lyndal maintained these scores it would mean that there would only be one more spot open. As we go to print, it has been announced that Simone is actually leaving Gestüt Bonhomme and will instead be based at Sophia Ritzinger’s yard. While we don’t yet know what horses she’ll be riding in the lead up to Paris, anything is possible when you look at what she’s achieved with Fiderdance in the space of just 12 months.
As the year progresses, if further Australian combinations went up around the scores Simone and Lyndal have achieved of late, then the whole balance changes and Australia would be a dressage nation to be reckoned with! That would be a great thing. We do need to be very clearly making moves in our international standing with the Brisbane 2032 Olympics on the horizon. As far as Paris is concerned, we do have some Australian individuals who have not yet made a move on the CDI Grand Prix that all of us are hoping have the potential to challenge the 70% and above mark. Just maybe the Paris Olympics will see us have the best Australian dressage team ever. Here’s hoping.
BRING ON MILLSTREET!
The Australian eventing team, which realistically has a show of a medal at Paris, is indeed not qualified for the Paris Olympics. I just need to mention here that the Australian team did bring home a team silver medal from the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and an individual bronze medal courtesy of Andrew Hoy and Vassily de Lassos. Ironically, we had a terrible World Championships last year, coming tenth out of 16 nations. Oops! You can’t win all the time. Anyway, this was a disaster in terms of qualifying for Paris.
“Australia is going to
throw everything they
have at Millstreet.”
So right now, Australian eventing is 100% focused on the Irish three-day-event at Millstreet from 1-4 June 2023. This is four weeks away from the time of writing this column. Millstreet is a designated FEI Paris qualifying event for Groups F and G. Australia is in Group G and we need to come first or second as a team in this group, and the teams that we have to fend off are India, China, Japan and Thailand. There are other nations I have not mentioned in this group, and I realise that may be inadvertently disrespectful, however, it is my opinion that the above mentioned four other nations are the only teams that could possibly challenge a full-blooded Australian team of our best riders. Actually, I don’t think they can challenge us, but that sort of attitude can definitely bring you undone. It is only a CCIO3*L class which is below the normal 4* class and well below the 5* class which was run at Adelaide just a couple of weeks ago. The Australian eventers are outstanding, especially when the going gets really tough. With this Olympic qualifier being a little more gentle, it does potentially expose us to countries which are not quite as good at the big time but may still put up a spectacular performance when the pressure is not quite so great.
Anyway, as I understand it, Australia is going to throw everything they have at Millstreet, and it will be our “A team”. There will be a training camp in England one week before Millstreet when the team will be selected. This team will be named on the Equestrian Australia website probably around 25-26 May. Watch out for that announcement. Again, the team will be made up of three riders only. That means if one rider has an unfortunate mishap, the whole team is dragged down. Touchy stuff this three-man team thing when a team needs three scores on the board. In times gone by, an Olympic team always ran four riders.
For those of you who are interested in the politics and policies, we do not yet know who our Australian selectors are for Paris. Nominations for all the Olympic disciplines closed on 14 April and are awaiting ratification by the board. Any day now they will be announced on the EA website. It is my understanding that the selection criteria for all the Olympic disciplines has already been written and will be published once the new selectors have reviewed it and are comfortable with what they are going to have to live with over the next 18 months.
BLOODLINES SHINE THROUGH
Since my last column, the Sydney CDI was held over 26-29 April. The young horse classes are proving to be very popular and there are some amazingly well-bred horses now in Australia with amazing movement. The draw online didn’t always have the full breeding, even of the young horse classes. This was disappointing; however, I think there was a hard copy program that was much more comprehensive.
The Donnerhall dynasty still prevails and is dominant with sires like Don Frederico, Desperados, Damsey, Dancier, De Niro, Don Schufro, Sir Donnerhall, and stallions like For Romance who have several crosses of Donnerhall two or three generations back. The Jazz bloodline is still really prolific. This bloodline is definitely not the easiest horse to ride but it is not only still popular in Australia, it is also having an impressive resurgence in the northern hemisphere. Jazz himself was the sire of quite a few horses at the Sydney CDI and is also represented through other sires like Jive Magic and Johnson. The Vivaldi line seems to be going very strong, especially with Vitalis proving to be very popular. The Quando Quando bloodline has in recent years become more and more popular through Quaterhit and Quaterback. The Gribaldi bloodline looks like it is going to become another huge dynasty with horses like Totilas and Toto Jnr becoming very popular.
Sandro Hit is popular all by himself and through stallions like Sunny Boy, Santano, Stedinger, Sir Donnerhall and Secret, the Sandro Hit influence is immense. The Australian-based stallion Regardez Moi, who himself was three times Australian Grand Prix Champion, represents the Rubinstein bloodline. Regardez Moi has had a great influence on the Australian dressage scene from young horses right up to and including the Grand Prix classes. The Dutch Ferro blood is also going strong, especially through Negro who, besides being a sire of horses at this Sydney CDI, is also the sire of the double Olympic gold medallist Valegro, and now the dam sire of the reigning World Champion, Glamourdale. The Sydney CDI had all of these bloodlines and more and Australia in general has every top dressage stallion in the world with progeny in our paddocks. I do think this is a critical development for Australia.
In the top class, which was the Equestrian NSW CDI3* Grand Prix, the New Zealanders really gave us Australian riders a good lesson! Melissa Galloway riding Windermere J’Obei W won the CDI3* Grand Prix on a score of 70.891%; the second placegetter was also a New Zealander in Wendi Williamson riding Don Vito MH with a score of 70.435%. These two New Zealanders were a solid 3% in front of the first of the Australian riders in Alinta Veenvliet riding Desperanza. Alinta is from Western Australia. So normally, the New Zealanders really struggle to achieve a minor place at the Sydney CDI (other than last year, when Gaylene Lennard and Jax Johnson claimed the top prize) and the West Australians have no chance of any place. Well, that didn’t happen at the 2023 Sydney CDI. So, congratulations to the NZ riders who were very impressive. A dressage rider from Western Australia is a bit like a snow skier who is based at Uluru! A very, very big congratulations to Alinta and her horse Desperanza.
It did end up being the Melissa Galloway and her horse Windermere J’Obei W runaway show. Melissa won the Grand Prix Special and Grand Prix Freestyle with scores getting further and further away from everyone else, with a massive 76.330% in the Freestyle. Windermere J’Obei W is by the Dutch-bred stallion Johnson, who is a Jazz stallion out of a Flemmingh mare. Johnson was ridden by the Dutchman Hans Peter Minderhoud who once said that the biggest thing about Johnson was that at the top end of the sport, he would always try so hard that he was simply outstanding.
However, interestingly, the dam line for Windermere J’Obei W was a beautifully bred New Zealand Thoroughbred mare by Pompeii Court. I guess a good horse is a good horse no matter what its breeding. A good horse is a lucky horse, especially if it has a good rider as its partner. Melissa Galloway and Windermere J’Obei W made a wonderful contribution to the Sydney CDI 2023. Thank you.
Well, that’s it from me for this month. Next month also promises to be very interesting where we can study who is in the Australian eventing team taking on the challenge of qualifying Australia for the Paris Olympics. With a bit of luck, we will have raised $70,000 and the Australian team for the Virtus Global Games will be already over there in France and hopefully we bring you a progress report. It will be very interesting to keep an eye on that West Australian, Alinta Veenvliet, and whether she can inch her way closer to the 70% mark and challenge for a ticket to Paris. EQ
Cheers, Heath.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE TO READ BY HEATH RYAN:
Will Enzinger a Potential Game Changer – Equestrian Life, March 2023
A Dressage Adventure – Equestrian Life, February 2023
The Big Picture for 2023 – Equestrian Life, January 2023
Heads Up Next Gen, Brisbane Awaits – Equestrian Life, December 2022
Planning for Paris, Leading to LA, Building for Brisbane – Equestrian Life, November 2022
Eventing Results: Disappointing but Promising! – Equestrian Life, October 2022
