Quirindi One Day Event 2020 was meant to be taking place this weekend
Two events scheduled to take place in NSW, Australia in the next few weeks have been stopped in their tracks by a change in Covid-19 regulations by the NSW government
The easing of restrictions for community sport in early July meant that NSW equestrian clubs could re-start competitions and the organising committees for Quirindi Eventing and Sydney @ SIEC swung into action.
But the NSW Chief Health Officer yesterday tightened the restrictions around community sport for the next six weeks, stopping Quirindi National One Day Event, which was meant to take place this weekend from 20th – 23rd August and the Randwick Equine Sydney @ SIEC Spring Classic from 4th – 6th September
The directive that ‘all community sporting events that involve travel from other regions should cease’ effectively stops the two events, that attract competitors from large areas around NSW and that, under normal circumstances, usually also attract interstate riders
Although competitors can attend events with their own Zones, these specific zonings are not yet specified and, due to wide area that eventing competitors are usually drawn from, it seems unlikely that this would solve the problem.
“The only good thing is that we haven’t put the dressage arenas out yet” says Vicki Burgess, organiser of Quirindi Eventing “But eight courses are flagged, numbered and were waiting for competitors”
The event, held at the Quirindi racecourse and showgrounds, was to run classes from EvA60 to CCN4* with two long format classes, a CCN3*-L and CCI2*-L, specifically scheduled to help riders achieve MERs for Wallaby Hill at Robertson late in the year
The event is hoping to reschedule to a later date once discussions have been held with NSW Eventing regarding other calendar fixtures
“It’s frustrating” admits Vicki “But we’ll just keeping trying to do the best we can”
The Sydney @ SIEC Facebook post regarding the cancellation also tried to be positive about the cancellation with committee member and course designer Sandy Lucas saying “A huge THANK YOU to everyone that participated recently in the ‘How to get really, really excited about our next competition’ program! Your support is greatly appreciated, but it is with much disappointment that it looks like it was just a practice run...”
The Sydney organising committee are also postponing and are hoping to try again in early November. This will be the fourth time in 2020 that they have tried to run the event in this very strange year; in February it was postponed due to bushfires and moved to July when it was stopped again due to Covid-19 and now postponed again to November.
“Luckily everyone on the committee knows their job really well so we can pick it all up again in a few weeks’ time and at least we have had some notice, unlike Quirindi” says Georgie Lorson “I was meant to picking up many of our prizes today but we’ll be in touch with all our sponsors and we’ll just push the pause button for now”
