The National Capital Horse Trials Association (NCHTA) has offered Vince Roche the position of CC Designer after the resignation of long term FEI course designer Grant Johnston.
Vince wrote to the organisers of the event saying “After accepting the offer to design the Canberra Three Star track in 2015, I first asked a number of Three Star riders for their observations on the course. The responses were remarkably similar. Firstly, the creek crossings upset the flow of the course and the rhythm of the horses, so that it took three or four fences to get the horses going again after each crossing. Secondly, the course was too twisty, again upsetting the flow and rhythm of the horses. Thirdly, the footing was often too firm, especially the landings and in particular the landings after the drop fences. Finally, there was a feeling that the course was a little too difficult for its place in the calendar – prior to Goulburn and leading up to Adelaide, and it needed to be a little softer to leave a “sweet experience” memory for horses on the Three and Four Star competition pathway.
Mike Etherington-Smith spent a day with me in April – walking around the course, making observations of the previous course and also suggestions for the new course – and we bounced ideas between ourselves. He also made himself available to comment critically and make further suggestions a short time afterwards when I had produced my first draft plan.
So what did we come up with? The creek crossings have been reduced from two to one, by starting on the eastern side of the creek. In addition, to minimise the disruption to rhythm and flow of the track, it is planned to open out the sides of the track down to and up from the creek. In addition, we plan to realign the track immediately after the (only on-course) creek crossing to go straight ahead from the track out of the creek through the trees, rather than further affecting the horses rhythm by a hard right turn at the top of the riverbank.
Changes to the creek crossing
The other balance that I hope to achieve is an adequate number of simple but maximum dimension “let up” fences between the complex fences – to allow horses to recover their confidence and rhythm after the “complexity and busy-ness” of the combination fences. The first few fences at the start are designed to get the horses going forward as well as getting them jumping up into the air. The last five fences are meant to keep the horses and riders switched on – important for safety.
Generally I have tried to avoid excessive turning especially early in the course where it is important to get horses moving forward well. In addition, the siting of a number of combinations has been re-sited to get the best footing and camber for the horses. We have worked hard to optimise the flow of the course.
NCHTA has borrowed a few 3 star portables for 2015 to help with the budget – as I would like to spend more effort and expense on the footings at most of the Three Star fences (especially the landings which in the case of most fences would benefit from application of 5 cm of sawdust or used stable shavings on the landings). I hope we may be able to do this also for the Two Star course. Also we plan to reshape the landings from the three FEI fences into water to make a “landing ramp” of road-base sloping down from 10cm deep at the base of the jump to zero over three metres – to ease the impact of jumping a drop into the flat footing of a water jump. Similar take off and landing ramps are planned for the related jumps in the middle of the water.
So what is the overall aim? I hope that Canberra Three Star (and by reflection the Two and One Star) courses be regarded by our riders as pitched at exactly the right level of difficulty vs confidence-endowing for horses that are planning to go to Lynton two weeks later and then to Adelaide Four Star.
We need visible and palpable efforts made to improve the going – especially takeoffs and landings to minimise the wear and tear on our elite horses.
And then we hope that the Canberra CIC will get the entries in the Three Star to show the committee that all this extra work is worth the effort!!”
The Canberra International One Day Event takes place on October 3rd & 4th and entries are now open on Nominate
