Brothers staying side by side
Many coaches bring along their horses to clinics so that when they have finished teaching for the day they can take the opportunity to school in a new place and pop over some new fences. So when we came across a couple of good looking young horses tied to Jenny Irvine-Brown's truck at the Mirrabooka Summer Camp we didn’t really think much more about it until Jenny mentioned that they were Abby’s babies.
We know you have something for us in that pocket ...
... and we're not going anywhere until we get it!
The Abby in question was Belcam Aberdeen who was ridden to great success by Jenny’s daughter Jess, who took the mare from the start of her eventing career and made it onto the short list for the 2002 World Equestrian Games.
We asked Jenny to tell us more about Belcam Aberdeen and about her two very cute young horses.
Belcam Aberdeen was always very elegant in the dressage phase
“My mum bought Abby for my daughter Jess, who was around 14 at the time. Abby had done some dressage and a little bit of show jumping but Jess was a keen event rider so she turned her into an eventer. Abby was a very opinionated mare and didn’t always want to be an eventer but Jess persisted and that persistence really paid off.
Craig Barrett was Jess’s coach and he was just marvelous with both Jess and Abby and the whole partnership turned into such a wonderful journey for my mum, Greg (my husband), myself, and our son Fraser.
She enjoyed some amazing success and when Jess was just 18 she was over in UK with the Australian team preparing for the World Equestrian Game in Jerez, Spain.
In one of the lead up events to WEG the mare stepped on a bell boot a drop fence and nearly somersaulted. She managed to regain her feet but had a terrible fright. Then a few fences later there was another drop fence where she had a stop so she wasn’t selected for the team
We still went along to watch the WEG and I often think that was a good thing. The course was extremely tough and as the day went on the going started to give way on the course so I had one of those moments where you think ‘hmmm it was probably a very good thing that the bell boot incident happened’ because despite some great performances Abby wasn’t very experienced at that level, just successful.
As we were over in England the EFA (now EA) paid for Jess and Abby to go to Blenheim CCI3*. There were 140 entries, with two days of dressage, which was huge numbers compared to what we were used to. At the end of the first day of dressage Jess and Abby were in the lead and they were still there at the end of the second day. You can imagine how the press dealt with the fact that this little young girl from Australia had come over to their event and was in front of all the expected front runners! Some of the papers called her a ‘Macca chick’ because during an interview she had mentioned that she had been working at McDonalds to earn money - I think the English found that quaint to say the least.
Cross country day was another great day and they held onto their lead, but the final day wasn’t so good. In fairness it was only about 10 days since the mare had left Australia and perhaps she was a little tired. Either way she had three or four rails down and finished about 12th. It was still a huge achievement and one of the nicest things I can remember was seeing Jess ride out of the show jumping arena with a big smile on her face. She wasn’t crushed with disappointment she just smiled, patted the mare and said to her ‘perhaps we need to work on our show jumping!’.
Abby and Jess flying high
A few years ago we thought we’d better breed from this talented mare before she was too old so we have three babies, all embryo transers. The first foal, which Jess is riding, is a very nice dapple grey mare by the NZ bred Croftlea Artizan. She is now seven and is Abby incarnate, incredibly opinionated but she does move in the same elegant way as her mother.
The other two are full brothers by Craig and Prue Barrett’s stallion Sandhills Staccato. We wanted to have some Staccato foals because of our long time connection with Craig and because Staccato has the title of being the No.1 ranked eventing stallion in the world and at one point Abby was the top ranked eventing mare in the world – so these guys should have some talent!”
For such well bred horses we were surprised to discover their names were very plain and simple, but there were reasons for this as Jenny explained:
“When the second foal was born he was a rich chestnut with a lot of bling, white socks, very un me! Everyone was standing around commenting on all this bling when Greg, who doesn’t really have much to do with the horses stepped in and said ‘well I am going to name him … his name is Greg!’
Greg arrived with bling!
The other name is a bit more sentimental because my mum was nearly at the end of her life when the foal was due. Mum couldn’t speak by that stage but I was talking her her and saying I wonder what we could call the foal if it was a boy? I made the suggestion that it could be named after her father Albert. Her eyes lit up and sparkled, a colt duly arrived and he is named Albert.
Albert gets up close and personal with the camera
The camp here at Mirrabooka has given Greg and Albert their first outing and they have both been so good. They have been tied up to the truck each day and been very sensible and Rebel Morrow, who has been teaching here, has ridden one of them each day so some days they have been ridden twice.
It’s going to be pretty exciting to see what sort of horses the ‘foal’s’ turn into and who knows maybe their journey will be just as exciting as their mothers.”
Possible stars of the future play - you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours!
