The happy band of people who attended the CD/TD course
Tamworth CD (Course Designer) – TD (Technical Delegate) Seminar
After six and a half hours driving I arrived in the city of Tamworth. The first sighting of this major regional hub includes AELEC, the Australian Equine and Livestock Events Centre. This impressive centre is to be the venue for one of the States newest events, which will be take place on the weekend of 4th-5th August and be run by the Tamworth International Eventing committee, headed up by Sharmayne Spencer.
Sharmayne, along with Eventing NSW’s ever-efficient secretary, Vicki Burgess, put together an interesting and thoughtful programme for the 40 or so attendees of this two day Course Designer (CD) and Technical Delegate (TD)seminar.
Vicki Burgess talks about safety ... is that Shane Rose lying down on the job?
Saturday started with a welcome from Sharmayne and an introduction from the NSW Eventing president, Shane Rose. Darryl Burgess (Level 2/3 CD and FEI 3 and 4* TD) then spoke about the roles of the TD and the CD.
As Darryl (pictured below) explained the TD works in conjunction with the CD, vet and organizing committee - and at a International event the Ground Jury – to ensure that all the arrangements for the event are fair, safe and appropriate.
This was followed by a presentation from Mark Wiggett and Vicki on Safety and fall analysis. The fall statistics make very interesting reading and certainly do help course designers avoid problems. It allowed you to see which type of fences horses are more likely to fall at, where they are situated on the course, and what sort of falls those fences caused. The morning continued with further discussions on topics such as EA and FEI eventing rules, what an organizer needs from a TD, CD, Results, TD reports and Fall reports.
Sue Gunn, CD at the new Denman event and former CD for SIEC and Goondoowindi CCI then spoke on the philosophies of cross-country design for the lower levels. She pointed out how important it was that these courses included a variety of fences so that riders don’t move up the grades without learning how to jump specific fences. Riders need to be encouraged at the lower levels and courses should in no way be out to trap or trick riders.
Wayne Copping, (pictured above) Australia’s most qualified course designer then started to talk. From this point on it was obvious that Wayne has a huge font of knowledge stored away in his head after 28 years experience as a course designer. Wayne’s philosophy of course designing was all about building the right obstacles that will produce the right shape of jump from the horses, which will therefore build confidence in both horse and rider.
With the presence of two of our elite riders in Shane Rose and Stuart Tinney, the discussions were extremely interesting when seen from both the elite course designer and elite rider perspectives.
Wayne summed up by saying “During the course of your career, you will experience all the highs and lows of eventing and quite often the results will be different to what you intended. You must learn from all of these situations and continue to develop your skills as a course designer. It has probably been said before some where, but remember that the ‘art of course designing is not an exact science!’
Andrew Haddad, Stuart Tinney and Shane Rose
Saturday afternoon included a walk around the site of the cross country course for the Tamworth event to be held in August. It is being designed by Tich Massey (FEI Level 3 and 4* CD) from NZ and built by Darryl Burgess. The space is open with some gentle hills and should provide a lovely flowing test for all levels. Discussion took place about the type of fences that had been sited at specific areas on the course and what led to that decision being made.
Looking back from the Tamworth course towards AELEC
Saturday night included dinner and more eventing related chat at the local Cascada restaurant, which had a very friendly atmosphere.
Sunday dawned cool but fine and the group gathered early at the picturesque and tranquil setting of Heritage Hill, the home of Sharmayne Spencer and Michael Ruddy. Greg Backhouse, an FEI Level 1 (N) and EA level 3 show jump course designer had set a preliminary showjump course for us to walk and discuss. Again, this was made all the more interesting when hearing the discussion from both the course designer as to why he built the course the way he did and from the rider, as to how and why they would ride the course in a certain way.
Michael Ruddy, happy to have people at his Heritage Hill home
One interesting point that came up was that in showjumping, once the fences are over a metre tall the striding of the horse is set at 12 feet (3.6m) and this distance is adhered to (the distance is shortened a little for fences under a metre). In cross country, for combination fences the rule states that distances are to be set at a true distance … but no actual figure is mentioned! Only experience and observation of horses jumping combinations will tell the course designers what to do.
Further discussion followed on topics such as low-level rules, and a scenario workshop, which included incidents at events that had actually happened in the past, a rule book quiz and others.
The whole weekend was informative, educational and very interesting and a huge thank you to Eventing NSW for running it! It gave us all a wonderful insight into the sport from the sport administration side and, with Shane and Stuart present, from the rider's perspective as well. Even if you are not thinking of becoming an official CD or TD, a course like this would certainly open your eyes to the intricacies of our great sport. Hopefully, one day soon, Wayne will put his knowledge on paper for us all to benefit from – but for the moment I think he is too busy building great courses!
