After a long hiatus, Ashley Cole returned to the saddle when hubby suggested she buy a horse. She is now polishing the coveted Tom Quilty Gold Cup in her trophy cabinet, thanks to stallion Tonki Dee Boo Novak.

Avid New Zealand endurance rider and breeder Ashley Cole, 56, grew up with horses in her blood. She completed her first endurance ride at 13, and despite an 18-year mid-life break from the sport, she was destined to find her way back. Ten years ago, she did just that – and she hasn’t looked back.

In June, Ashley and her nine-year-old Arabian stallion, Tonki Dee Boo Novak, won Australia’s most prestigious endurance prize, the 160km Tom Quilty Gold Cup. Not only that, but they also posted the third-fastest time in the event’s 57-year history.

Named after a Kimberly cattleman who stumped up the inaugural event’s trophy money, the Tom Quilty first ran at Hawkesbury, NSW, in 1966. Twenty years later, it was decided to rotate the race from state to state, and this year it was held around Stirling’s Crossing in Imbil, Queensland.

Ashley’s journey to the Tom Quilty began with training and racing in New Zealand, culminating in winning the 120km Waimeha Mandate Cup in February. Three months before the Tom Quilty, she and Novak travelled to Australia to base at a friend’s place in Panuara, near Orange in NSW. Not quite the heat of Queensland, but as Ashley explains, it was all about the altitude.

“It was a toss-up: you go the heat or you go the altitude, so we went the altitude. It was minus five degrees when we were training. I think the worst problem was I developed chilblains on my feet… and about two days before the race I thought the bones in my feet were broken!”

The other reason she based in Australia for the race was the mental aspect. “I live really remote, and it was important for me to get to bigger events, get around people, and get my head in the game. I think a lot of us horsey people… we’re introverts and we like our horses and we’re not so much into people,” she laughs. “When we get out there in a really competitive environment, we can have the best horse in the world and the best gameplan in the world, but our head might let us down.

“It was a toss-up:
you go the heat or
you go the altitude.”

“Part of my training regime was getting myself out and amongst people. It’s not something that gets talked about and it’s something that’s highly underestimated. When you come to the pointy end of competition, winning at the top level is not an easy thing to do.”

OFF & RACING AT MIDNIGHT

“We left Panuara on the Saturday and the race started the following Friday at midnight,” explains Ashley of the trip up to Imbil. “I expected Novak to go well. Like most people going into a big event, you look at the competition and I thought there were five or so horses that would be hard to beat. I knew what my horse was capable of. I knew that he was feeling really good, and I felt it would take an absolute champion horse to beat him on the day. And if that was the case, I would have just bowed down to the champion!”

The Tom Quilty at Stirling’s Crossing was divided into five loops of 44km, 44km, 32km, 24km and 16km, with different coloured arrows associated with each for the riders to follow. Ashley explains how she and Novak came in from the first loop in seventh place, 10 minutes behind the leaders – not that she was worried, as she says you rarely win from the front of those early loops.

When horses come in from a loop, the clock continues to run until their heartrate is below 60bpm in the Tom Quilty – a rate even lower than the FEI standard of 64bpm. Once that rate is reached and the clock is stopped, and a new clock starts with 40 minutes “hold time” until they start the next loop. At this point, the horse enters the vet check where it’s assessed on everything from soundness via a trot-up, to vital signs such as gut sounds and more.

They must be fit to continue. With the 40-minute counter still running and roughly five minutes taken up by the vet check, the crew then has around 10 minutes to look after the horse and do what they can to ensure they are as fresh as possible to continue. This allows the horse 10 minutes to relax before they are re-saddled for the start line for their next loop. The process is repeated between each loop.

Ashley’s crew included crew boss Nadine from New Zealand, Ashley’s husband (also named Ashley), Tosca and Judy from New Zealand, and Fiona from England.

“Judy, her job was to look after me; she had to make sure I ate, which is not an easy job because you’re pretty wired… but if you don’t eat, you’re not smart. Nadine was crew boss and so the first thing they do when they get the horse back from the vet is to stand his front legs in a big bucket of ice up above his knees. Then someone else is at his head with food – lucerne and a hard-feed mix – and water. And then you’ve got two crew members on the hindquarters, one left and one right, massaging. We do this for 10 minutes; everybody works furiously on the horse while he eats and has his legs iced. And then once that 10 minutes is done, he goes in the pen with no people so he can do what he likes for 10 minutes before he has to be saddled up again. The crew is pretty busy!”

“I put a lot of
my success down
to my crew.”

GAINING GROUND

On the second loop, Ashley and Novak moved up to third place just a few minutes from the leaders, their position improved due to Novak’s heartrate rapidly falling back below 60bpm. “Someone could come in 10 minutes in front of me, but they could take seven minutes to pulse. And I could come in and take a minute and a half to pulse, so that’s where you can gain a lot of time. I was feeling pretty good at the end of the second loop. By that point I had an eye on all the other competitors I was chasing, so I was feeling pretty confident. It was just a matter of keeping my head in the game and not doing anything stupid.”

Ashley explains that it’s actually possible to get lost during an endurance event – something all endurance riders fear, and in fact the inaugural 1966 Tom Quilty winner, Gabriel Stecher, won despite completing several extra kilometres after losing his way!

Ashley says that it’s important as a rider to look after yourself and stay sharp: “We know what to eat, we know what to drink – we have electrolyte drinks. We look after ourselves physically so our minds can stay sharp. Because if our minds aren’t sharp, we’re going to make a mistake.”

Heading into the penultimate loop, there were around five competitors in the running. “I was just telling myself to trust the blood, trust the genetics of the horse. That’s what it’s all about. It’s like a show jumper, putting them at some epic jump… just shut your eyes and trust the blood. We left one minute in the lead by the last leg; I knew the horse behind me could run, and I knew my horse could run… so we just went out there and we ran.”

In endurance, the clock stops when you cross the finish line, but the race isn’t over. The horse has 30 minutes to present to and pass a final vet check for their placing to be counted; like the vet checks during the race, among other things the horse must have a heartrate back below 60 bpm.

“He took seven minutes to pulse down to 44 bpm. It blew me away. When I got off at the end I just left it to my crew because I didn’t want my horse to feel my stress. My crew are good at what they do and that was their job. They called me over and said, ‘Ashley, you’re going to have to make a call as to whether to present to the vet’, and I thought, ‘Oh my word, his heartrate must be high’… but it was down to 48 bpm at that point after about four minutes. We gave him another minute or so and then called it; we went into the vet check at 44 bpm. He’s a phenomenal horse, it blows me away just thinking about it afterwards.

“I put a lot of my success down to my crew. We had him cooled down completely when he left for that last leg. He didn’t even get hot on the last leg; we were running at 25km per hour. The horse that was running behind me, I didn’t see it, but had it caught up I knew Novak could have done something. I knew he felt good enough.”

While Ashley was confident in her horse’s ability heading into the race, she didn’t expect to finish in the time that she did – the third fastest result in history at 8 hours and 44 minutes. “As far as time was concerned, I thought we’d end up coming in at about 10 hours; you only ever go as fast as you need to go to win.”

Ashley says the win was surreal and after the early start and long race, although not in any pain, she was tired. “You get a bit tired, because you’re up before midnight and you probably don’t really get to sleep… when you go to bed at about 7 or 8pm (before the race) you try and close your eyes a bit before you have to get up again, but you don’t actually sleep. It’s kind of 48 hours without sleep. But we’re used to it; it’s what we do. We don’t think about being tired.”

She says that like in any equestrian sport, the horses must come first and their health is paramount. “The endurance motto is ‘fit to continue’. Horses, at the end of any distance, whether it’s 40km or 160km, they must be fit to continue.”

A PHENOMENAL HORSE 

Nine-year-old Arabian stallion Tonki Dee Boo Novak was the equine star of the 2023 Tom Quilty, and although Ashley is from NZ, Novak hails from “little old Tasmania”. “He’s from quite a famous stud in Tasmania called Tonki Dee Boo. It has some incredible endurance champions around the world. I still keep in touch with the breeders, Keryn and Chris Mahoney, and they’re very proud because this is the first time that they’ve had a champion on Australian soil. Most of their horses end up in the UAE.”

Ashley purchased Novak four years ago, and now at age nine he’s still young as far as endurance horses are concerned; it’s not unusual for horses to be racing until they are 20 years old.

“I’m not sure where to now for him. He’ll have a rest, I’ll have a rest. With a breeding stallion, you only have a certain window in which to compete – he’s out for the breeding season now,” says Ashley. “If he’s up for it next year, we’ll go for it. I think I will probably head back down the FEI path, and perhaps aim for the FEI World Endurance Championships – not next year in France, because we have a few qualification rides that we’re going to have to do to tick the boxes, but maybe the one after that in 2026.”

Ashley says that Novak loves the attention and care he receives as a competitive endurance horse; having a team of people fussing around him during a competition is his idea of how life should be every day. “He’s a stallion… like a man, he’s pretty entitled. Men expect that kind of attention, don’t they?” jokes Ashley. “Right now, he’s having a break but looking at me with angry eyes saying, ‘Why am I not getting three feeds a day? Why are you not changing my rugs every five seconds? Why haven’t I seen you today?’”

In all seriousness, Ashley believes that Novak is justified in his expectations; top competition horses thrive on knowing the order of their day: “Routine is critical. The top-level horses, they just have to have that routine.”

GROWING UP WITH HORSES

“I’m one of those kids that was blessed to be in a family surrounded by horses. I grew up on a farm; everybody rode, and horses were everywhere,” recalls Ashley. “No one rode in a saddle, everybody rode bareback… I think the shape of horses had to be quite different back then, because I couldn’t be riding anything bareback today!” Inaugural Tom Quilty winner Gabriel Stecher actually rode his Arabian stallion, Shalawi, bareback on his way to victory, such was this the norm back in the day.

“I started Pony Club age nine and learnt skills there that I believe are critical to everyday riding. I just think it’s critical that people learn how to ride correctly and those skills will take them through to excel in any discipline,” says Ashley.

“In endurance, to ride your horse safely through 160 kilometres and finish competitively, you have to ride straight and you have to understand the basics, like changing diagonals, changing leg… you learn those basics at Pony Club.”

Ashley completed her first endurance ride in New Zealand when she was 13. “I then took an 18-year hiatus while we built our business and had other priorities, but that ended 10 years ago,” she says, adding that it was a horse – and her husband – that got her back into the sport.

Wanting a horse himself, Ashley’s husband asked her to have a look for him – and made the mistake of saying she should get one for herself! Nothing caught Ashley’s eye until she saw an advert for a newly broken three-year-old Arabian named Kahuna Moon.

“I couldn’t sleep that night thinking about this horse. I thought, ‘jeepers, if I buy this horse, I’m going to need to ride it every day!’ I just got more and more excited about it. When I contacted the lady, she said to me that she really wanted it to go to an endurance home, and so I said, ‘Yeah, I do endurance’. I had no intention of going back to endurance, I just wanted the horse!” The first day Ashley rode this horse, she knew she’d have to get back into the sport and it wasn’t long before she had a professional team running with multiple FEI horses. Besides Kahuna Moon, in recent years her FEI horses have included Makahiwi Shicane, Lonestar Casino, Twynham El Desiree, Nha’Dia NZL and Dvotion Me.

“I couldn’t sleep that night
thinking about this horse.”

“These days I’m trying to peg it back now more towards breeding and less towards the racing and get it to a point where I can just do it myself, where I’m just racing one or two horses,” says Ashley.

BREEDING ENDURANCE HORSES

Ashley’s stud, Murumuru Endurance (suffix ME) is named after her and her husband’s original sheep farm, and in the local language translates to “above the clouds”.

“Being able to race the stallion that I breed with is for me the ultimate way to run a business. And it worked; Tonki Dee Boo Novak won the Quilty in a phenomenal time and I breed progeny from him, so it’s a real win-win. We’re really excited about the future,” says Ashley, who has lightly backed four-year-olds by her stallion that she believes are very exciting.

“They seem to have the heartrates of their father and they’ve got an incredible temperament, which is just as well because they’re very big and I’m very small,” laughs Ashley, explaining that she’s been breeding to Thoroughbred mares and producing mainly Anglo Arabians. “We’re very blessed here in New Zealand in that we can get our hands on some really blueblood Thoroughbred mares.”

Ashley believes the Anglos are versatile and suited to many disciplines. “They’ve got such phenomenal temperaments, movement, structure and soundness, they’ve just got it all going on and so it’s quite good to breed versatile horses that are not stuck to one market.”

Interestingly, countries in the Middle East such as the UAE have long been interested in purchasing Arabians and Anglos from Australia and New Zealand – and in fact, Australian-bred horses have won at World Equestrian Games and World Championships in recent years. “Australia and New Zealand horses have got good bones from being raised here, good structure, and then you start looking at the bloodline and the blood that is available in Australia, there’s a line predominantly from Chip Chase Sadaqa – he was, and still is, incredibly sought-after. My stallion is a double cross to him.”

‘WHAT DO I LOVE ABOUT THE ARAB?’

“I love their intelligence. I love how brave they are and how willing they are to do what they need to do for their person. They will be as brave as the person on their back,” says Ashley of her attraction to the breed.

“You see these pictures of Arabs, and they are going up and down. Anyone that knows horses can see that the rider’s hands are saying ‘stop’ and their body is saying ‘go’ and the Arab is confused, so it’s going up and down; an Arab is made to go forward. ‘Up and down’ is not how a typical Arab goes… when you have your signals right, they are the most forward moving horse. I love how easy they are to ride.

“They really get their hindquarters underneath them, they are so naturally collected. Especially our endurance horses, they’ve got low hocks, long thighs, and they can really get their hindquarters underneath them. It’s phenomenal, they will just lope along at 25km per hour effortlessly. It’s where they travel comfortably; the structure of the horse makes it effortless for them.”

While Ashley was once farming sheep, cattle and bees among other things, she says the horses have “pretty much taken over” these days. “Now I’m just 100 per cent concentrating on the horses. We bought a second property, which was in a warmer climate so the mares cycle earlier, and this makes the breeding program more sustainable.”

Ashley explains that their first farm is located in Ruatiti, south-west of Taupō, and it was a little cold for breeding: “In the cold climate, the mares don’t cycle to November and then if you don’t get them until the second cycle you’re not foaling until December or January. By then you’ve got to start thinking about the following breeding season and it wasn’t sustainable.” Now based further north in Coromandel east of Auckland, the mares foal around the beginning of September, leaving plenty of time to prepare Novak for the racing season from the beginning of November.

GET INVOLVED

The good thing about your husband once telling you to buy a horse is the fact you’re always equipped with the perfect comeback should your horse-related expenditure ever come into question. “Every time he asks, ‘Do you really need to buy this for the horses?’ I say, ‘Remember that time you made me buy that horse?’ laughs Ashley. Although her husband no longer rides, he supports Ashley wholeheartedly and was in Queensland to see her and Novak cross the finish line. “My husband came to the Quilty, which was pretty cool… it was special to share the moment with him.”

Ashley says endurance events are great to be a part of – even as a spectator – and she encourages equestrian enthusiasts to head along to the next Tom Quilty Gold Cup to see for themselves. With the 2024 edition to be staged at picturesque Wirrina Cove in South Australia – complete with ocean backdrop – it’s set to be a great year for those interested in finding out what it’s all about.

Ashley also encourages those who compete in other disciplines to get involved with endurance at the lower levels, as it’s a great way to get horses fit. “Don’t be afraid to come out and have a go at one of the training rides for your horse’s fitness. It’s a great way to get eventers fit, doing a 10km or 20km event. It’s cheap as chips and it’s good fun!” EQ

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