The winners - Sam Lyle and Carson Hill
As ‘The Dome’ stadium at Olympic Park begin to fill up commentator of the Be the Influence Exhibition Grand Final, Hamish Cargill, explained to the Equitana crowd that this class had come about as a way of promoting the sport to the people and certainly that’s what happens when you run the event as part of the whole Equitana experience.
People whose interest was maybe in reining or polo-cross keenly took their seats to watch the eventers battle it out over Stuart Tinney and John Vallance’s course with their only connection to eventing being ‘the horse’.
So yes it did bring the sport to the people but did it really show off eventing in Australia in all its glory … I think the jury may still be out on that one.
Soigne Jackson was happy with her dressage test
The day began with a dressage test for the 13 riders but at the end of the day the dressage test had little relevance on the final outcome. The test of the morning came from Soigne Jackson riding the warmblood Warrego Collateral Damage who scored 74.3%.
“I was really pleased with him,” said Soigne afterwards. “He’s been out for a while with an injury and has only recently come back to competition. Last weekend I rode him at Canberra in the EvA95 class where we led the dressage but decided to withdraw from cross county. He coped with the atmosphere in the ‘Dome’ arena really well, which I was very happy about.”
Emma Mason and Poker Face
Emma Mason managed to keep a lid on Poker Face’s enthusiasm for being quite spooky and sharp (although I did see him have a good look at the pot of flowers) to produce a second placed test and a score of 69% while Tim Boland and Umunga lay third on 68.6%.
Sam Lyle, who went on to win the class with his wife’s horse Carson Hill, produced a nice test, in what was a pretty scary atmosphere, which left him in seventh place.
Shane Rose who, until yesterday, had an unbeaten record for winning the Exhibition Eventing since it’s conception some five years ago was riding APH Rusalka and although Shane commented that he thought his test had been ‘alright’ he did have a little discussion over one of the flying changes and the test saw him lying in tenth place going into the jumping phase.
The course ready for walking
By the end of the afternoon the riders were ready to walk their course, which included a range of show jumps, a couple of off-set house type fences, and a few decent sized corners as well as a joker fence. The track ran from the main Dome arena through to the warm-up arena, jumping a narrow brush fence both on the way there and back.
It’s a this point that it is worth mentioning the scoring system which, unless you spent some time reading the rules, wasn’t that easy to grasp which means it’s not easy for spectators to get excited about who is in with a chance of winning.
The action got underway with Hamish introducing each rider, along with their relevant impressive credentials with the list including riders who had represented their country in Olympic Games or World Championships. Then as it became clear that this was going to be a tricky course to get round clear someone sitting close to me asked “So are these Australia’s top event riders?” to which I explained that yes there were some of our top riders but they weren’t riding their top horses.
“I still thought they would be better than this,” to which I replied (with my hackles up) “You should come to Adelaide next weekend then you could really see just how good they are!”
Shane Rose had said the week before the Exhibition Eventing that he wasn't sure if he would be able to hold onto his reign in this event and that proved to be true as APH Rusalka had a run out at the brush fence (see below).
Paul Tapner had retreated back to Australia from his base in England (probably to avoid the cold and wet British weather) and was being kept busy at Equitana not only riding in the Megan Bryant’s Molokai Road in the Exhibition Eventing but also running half an hour ‘training sessions’ during the day.
Hamish Cargill told the audience that Paul had only ridden his Exhibition Eventing horse ‘Molokai Road’ for around ten minutes prior to starting the class and when you take that into consideration the pair did quite well lying eighth after dressage and pulling up to finish sixth overall.
Paul Tapner and Molokai Road
Mustang, owned by Emma Scott, and currently ridden by Crystal Conning may be 15 but there is certainly plenty of life left in this talented horse although his zest for life was probably not welcomed by Crystal as she attempted to keep his concentration during his dressage test.
His enthusiasm carried through to the jumping phase where the pair suffered a few rails down and a couple of run outs.
Jade Findlay and Frontier Psychiatrist were looking good on the first part of the course
Frontier Psychiatrist was another horse who found the Equitana atmosphere somewhat uplifting and following the dressage phase Jade was hoping that some level of concentration would return to her horse before the jumping phase.
Everything was looking really good for Jade until they chipped in a short stride before one of the cross country fences which meant the show jumping 7A and B fences didn’t come up on a great stride and Frontier Psychiatrist ran out of space, depositing Jade at the second element despite her best efforts to stay on board.
“Well that’s the fall over with,” said Jade, “now we can look forward to Adelaide having got our back luck out of the way.”
Careful and clear was the order of the day for Sam Lyle
As rails fell and horses ran out it was looking as if no one would be able to jump clear but thankfully Sam Lyle saved the day riding a carefully judged round which put him into the lead with half the field still to go.
Megan Jones rode Megan Bryant's Talinga Cavalier into third fourth place
Cassie Webb riding Beckli were next in but they took three rails down including the last fence which was struggling to stay on it’s cups with most riders. Then it was the turn of Elizabeth Lowery who clocked up one of the quicker rounds of the day despite losing her way momentarily but two rails down put her back behind Sam.
Elizabeth Lowery and KL Kismet rode a quick round and finished in overall third place
Rachel Lee had a few problems with Ballieu and then all eyes were on Tim Boalnd and Umunga who have enjoyed some great results recently. But again the rails fell and I think the Ground Jury may have had something to say about Umunga’s leap over the the narrow brush fence, where he may not have jumped between the flags.
Tim Boland and Umunga
Emma Mason didn’t get further than the hay bale corner when Poker Face decided he couldn’t possibly jump the fence. So it was up to Soigne to come up with the goods if she was going to beat Sam to the $5,000 prize money for first place but after a run out at the corner fence and rails down it became clear that Sam had finished as the well deserved winner of the 2013 Exhibition Eventing Grand Final.
I caught up with Sam as he left the arena to congratulate him on his win and this is what he had to say.
A little later I spotted Nicky Lyle and asked her how she felt about watching her husband ride her horse.
Thanks to Allira Fontana for her great photos
For those of you who feel you should have read the rules of Exhibition Eventing before you got to Equitana here they are:
DRESSAGE PHASE
Each combination will perform a dressage test The results of the dressage phase will seed the riders for the jumping phase. The leading combination will start the jumping phase on a score of 0 whilst the combination in 2nd place will carry through 2 penalties and the 3rd placed combination will take through 3 penalties and so on.
JUMPING PHASE
The Jumping will be run in reverse order of standing. The jumping course will be a combination of cross-country and show jump fences. The course will include approximately 12 fences (6 x cross-country and 6 x show jump).
The cross-country fences will be solid fences of up to Equestrian Australia CNC 2-star dimensions and the show jumps will be up to CNC 3* dimensions.
There will be an optional joker fence (show jump) which will be up to 1.45m in height. If successfully jumped the joker fence will wipe 4 penalties off the rider’s total score. If the joker fence is knocked down the rider will incur 8 penalties!
The first two refusals at jumps incur no penalties, only the time taken to represent will disadvantage the rider. However, 3 refusals on course results in elimination.
Optimum time for this course will be about 475 metres per minute. Riders will be penalised for exceeding the optimum time and also penalised if they complete the course more than 5 seconds under the optimum time.
The rider with the least penalties at the end of the competition is the winner.
