An Eventful Life will be filming all competitors on cross country at
Tonimbuk Horse Trials 2020 - find out more here
Watch our interview with Event Director Kate Wallis here
DownUnder by Men At Work would definitely have been the theme song for the day we visited Tonimbuk Equestrian Centre to see how the cross country course re-building for the 2020 Tonimbuk International 3 Day Event was coming along
While John Nicholson is designing the CCI3*-S and CCI4*-S courses, Mick Pineo is looking after the CCI1*-S and CCI2*-S courses and has had to rebuild many fences that were destroyed in last year’s fires. The upsides are that they might last longer as the white ants in the region don’t like burnt wood and the going in the cleared bush tracks will be much improved ....
It was an international affair with New Zealand’s Chris Lever building John Nicholson’s 4* course (see our interview below) and an Englishman, Will Foulkes, responsible for the 80cm and 95cm courses
Will, now a self-confessed eventing addict, tells us how he’s became involved in cross country course building, how he sets out to design interesting tracks with flow ‘particularly for the younger horses’ and how he aims to create courses that are ‘kind of a story with a beginning, middle and end’
Chris Lever had come over from New Zealand for a couple of weeks in January to work on the new fences for John Nicholson’s CCI4* course while Mick Pineo and Will Foulkes were busy on the other courses when we visited.
Last year’s bushfires claimed many cross country fences and went through the bush areas of the track so nearly 90% of the cross country course jumps are being re-built and some of the timber used is still showing signs of the fire
