Dannie Lodder's shorts, worn at the first horse inspection, also made an appearance at the Tip, Strip and Out
At New Zealand's Puhinui Horse Trials in December the spectators were treated to some fun following the Honda NZ CCI3* cross country when the Equilibrium Puhinui Challenge was held in the main arena. The Challenge comprised a single fence high jump competition contested by two teams of four riders representing The Show Jumpers and The Eventers
The showjumping riders were Rebekah van Tiel, Laura Inkster, Travis Morgan and Jamie Campbell while the event riders were Tim and Jonelle Price, Donna Smith and Dannie Lodder. As you’ll hear in the video, we didn’t get to find out most of the horse’s names but the commentary seems to work okay with Donna’s ‘yellow pony’, Tim’s ‘something black’ and Rebecca’s ‘grey one’ although a few get proper names, notably the lovely Grand Prix jumping horse Socrates de la Vie ridden by Jamie Campbell and Laura Inkster's pony jumping sensation Ingasetter was also impressive enough to get a real name!
Locally known as “Tip, Strip and Out” (or Strip, Tip and Out, we couldn’t work out which), you will no doubt get the gist of the game. The horses only had to tap a pole, not just knock it down, for the rider to have to remove an item of clothing. Being smart women Jonelle, Dannie and Donna came out wearing multiple bras on top of their shirts but the boys soon made up for it by finding other things to remove. Tim Price showed he didn’t need a saddle however removing his shirt was his undoing. Jonelle may be the number two rider in the world but her horse decided it wasn’t a show jumper and Dannie Lodder ended up in almost as little clothing as she was wearing at the first horse inspection
It was a really fun event with some great jumping from 1.30m up to 1.60m with riders in various states of undress and some classy horses showing how it should be done. Here’s the video of the full competition
Look mum, no saddle!
