Ok! This is a little insane! If you had told me two years ago that I would be blogging for An Eventful Life one day I would have laughed at you, but here I am and I suppose I had just better get down to it!
First of all I should probably introduce myself, my name is Alice Hirst and I am an 18 year old Tasmanian event rider. I am currently competing 2** on my horse Mighty William (or Will) and I have a few young horses coming up the ranks as well including Berragoon Sizzle (Siz) and Cavallo Park Artwork (Bussie).
Down here in Tassie our event season is in full swing, in fact we are actually nearing the end of our season now, which is relatively short and is run over the summer and early autumn. Our first events are normally run in November/December time and our last is our State Championships during the Easter break.
Due to me being a massive twit and managing to snap my humorous bone (just below the shoulder) in early October (and doing a pretty good job of it), I was unable to compete for nearly three months which took a huge bite out of the season for me, not to mention missing Adelaide and Lakes and Craters! And my exams! Actually being exempt from my final year 12 exams wasn’t so bad … but I missed Lakes and Adelaide! – now that is serious. Most events run in Tassie only cater to PC Grade 1 so Will actually isn’t going to have his first run until the 16th of February! So the three events that I have done this season so far have been with my green horses, Berragoon Sizzle and Cavallo Park Artwork.
Sizzle in the Prelim (Grade 2) class at LPRC one day event
Image: Callie Stubbs
During these events Sizzle made the step up from preliminary to pre novice with great success (he would have won his second start in the pre novice if we hadn’t got so many time penalties! We need to be a bit fitter for those hills I think! But he has been consistently scoring over the 70% mark for all his tests so I’m very impressed with this little guy!
This is Bussie’s first time in the competition arena and she has only just started to jump so she has done a great job doing as well as she has. She won her last two dressage tests, the most recent one scoring a whopping 77% in the introductory and is jumping so well for the amount of experience she has had!
Bussie has her first competition in the Training class (PC grade 4) at LPRC one day event
Image: Callie Stubbs
But eventing isn’t the only thing happening in Tassie at the moment. Every year our whole family packs up the truck on the first weekend of February and trundles along to the Tasmanian Mountain Cattleman’s Get-together! This year I was too precious to bring along Sizzle like I did last year so the old ‘wonder horse’ Snort came out of semi-retirement a few weeks beforehand and I entered the senior championship which consists of 3 phases (Handy stock horse, Campdrafting and the stock horse race). I think I was the only one who had boots on all four legs (taped up!), a nose band, tall boots and a numnah! I suppose you can take the girl out of eventing but you can’t take the eventing out of the girl! In true Snort form, he was a legend and won the whole thing which was utter craziness as it was only the second time I had attempted the championship! What a super horse! So I picked up a rather nice little collection of prizes and Snort added another feather to his already crowded hat.
Snort and I competing in the Stockhorse race section of the Championship
Image: Examiner Newspaper website
Due to leaving school last year I am currently floating around on my gap year (it might turn into a few gap years actually) and am planning a few trips over on the boat (Spirit of Tasmania) to compete on the big island. I have entered and booked the boat ready for Wandin HT and we will see what happens after that!
In the meantime I suppose I will keep riding and hopefully get to Grade 1 Trials on Sizzle by March long weekend (trials is the biggest and most prestigious event run in Tassie). I will also be continuing to ride the baby ponies that are coming along, one of them a is a four year old WB by Valhalla III out of a Daley K/TB mare who is very fancy and one I can’t wait to get going!
So until next time!
Alice
