If you're bothering to read this blog, you've probably been obsessed with horses for as long as you can remember. Otherwise you'd be watching cats doing ridiculous things on YouTube. I too have a self-confessed horse obsession, and have dreamed about riding for Australia at the Olympics. At just 13 years of age, fuelled by a front page article in the local rag, very dubiously claiming I could become "one of the State's top equestrians", I considered my future sealed. I was the daughter of a World Champion yachtsman after all, so surely I had whatever it is you're supposedly born with to make it to the top.
Ironically it was my World Champion Dad who inadvertently held me back. He was always too busy sailing the world and neglecting to buy me a decent horse, despite my constant protestations. Instead I was at the mercy of "friends with free horses" and always given the duds to retrain. I had it all: the pony who constantly tried to roll, even when you were on it, to the ex racehorse who got so hyped up show jumping it tried to jump a one stride double in one jump and of course, dropped me from a great height in the middle of a cacophony of jump poles going down like tiddly winks.
Back in the 1970's, gap years were unheard of. For snotty nosed private school girls like me, there was another option: finishing school. My mother had been to one in Melbourne, which was very flash in the 40's, and Dad was offering to send me to one in Switzerland! (I know, after years of not buying me a horse, he offers to pay for that!) If you know me, that fancy stuff "aint really my thang", so I blackmailed Dad into instead sending me to Moat House in England to study for my British Horse Society Assistant Instructors Certificate. With the benefit of hindsight, and now knowing that the "Finishing School" was more of a very long snow skiing holiday, I should have gone to Switzerland. The BHSAI proved to be rather basic and boring. But I did get to ride in a clinic with the great trainer of the British Olympic team and rider of the Queen's horses, the late Bertie Hill, who then offered to take me on as a working pupil. Those years of riding dud horses had paid off and my Olympic dream was one step closer. While Dad was sailing the Sydney/Hobart, I was in England's green and pleasant land with one of eventing's greatest coaches.
But nothing ever goes to plan. I was only just 18 and didn't have the confidence to admit to Mr Hill that I'd never even done one official competition. I very quickly got the "yips" i.e. was over-faced cross country and had the Steven Hooker's fear of heights. Disconsolate, I returned to Australia, my Olympic dreams sprinkled with nightmares of enormous trakehners.
Did I say I'd jump that?????
It was 1979, the year before the Moscow Olympics, and the Equestrian Federation was looking for grooms for the eventing team. I whipped up a pretty over-the-top CV, making outlandish claims of excellence in grooming skills and before I knew it, was dropping out of Teachers College to go to Moscow! I've always been a "big lass", and was at an Adelaide cocktail party (oh dear, did I let slip I'm actually from Adelaide?) when a rather pompous woman inquired, "I hear you're going to the Olympics. Do you mind me asking what as?" My friend Max Grant quipped, "As the high jump bag!" Luckily for him, I thought it was very funny, and even better Ms Pompous did not.
But alas, it was not to be. Some of you weren't even born then, so wouldn't know that the then Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and with war came sports administration turmoil. The Fraser Government didn't want to force the Australian Olympic Committee to boycott the Moscow Games, and a split vote on the Committee led to indecision and confusion. To be blunt, it was a debacle. Some individual athletes chose to boycott while the rest of the team went, such as swimmer Tracey Wickham and sprinter Raelene Boyle. The Eventing team decided to boycott, and instead went to an event in Fontainebleau in France, but my ticket to the Olympics was gone.
Pure inspiration at Sydney 2000 Photo: Kit Houghton/FEI
Fast forward 20 years. I'd given up horses, got married, had 2 children, and decided it was time to get back in the saddle. What better way to find the inspiration than a trip to the Sydney Olympics. It was a real Thelma and Louise trip without the death and destruction. Me and my three besties driving from Melbourne to Sydney to saturate ourselves in equine heaven. We had a ball, drank way too much and invaded the spectators are the most weird and wonderful sports. Forget the dressage. You simply MUST watch handball. It's Amazeballs!
So now another decade has gone by and I'm off to London. A lack of tickets was threatening to bring another nasty end to an Olympic misadventure, but thanks to Sharon Ridgway deciding NOT to go and selling me her tickets, I leave next Thursday. And yes, fly straight into a baggage handlers strike at Heathrow. Nothing like a challenge right from the starting gates.
Oh, and just for the record, I'm still dreaming, but not of riding at the Olympics, just making it around Melbourne 1*.
