Every year Kevin Hansen, his lovely wife Sue, and a huge band of helpers put on what can only be described as an incredible spectacle - the Horse of the Year Show. And every year it gets bigger and better. It's not just a horse show - it's a chance to shop-till-you-drop, to catch up with friends from around the country and indeed the world. All my sponsors are there and it's a great time to be with them and support them for the support they have given me. It's a chance to socialise, to show off your horse, and oh yeah - the little thing of actually competing.
I have always been in awe of what Kevin and his team produce at the Hasting Show Grounds each year, and I am always willing to help out whenever I can. I missed my first ever HOY last year, doing it hard sitting it out in Barcelona. This year I knew if I could pull it off it would be my best chance to show Ali Baba off to a huge audience. And that's just what we did.
Ali Baba's timetable for the show was a week or more long and looked like this:
Sunday 10th March - Holy Grail Showjumping event at Church Road - two performances
Monday 11th March - Teaching Hawkes Bay pupils
Tuesday 12th March - Heading for the Showgrounds
Wednesday 13th March - setting up my tradestand and settling in
Thursday 14th March - Prix St Georges Test, TV1 News using Ali Baba and I with Mark Todd for an interview, Stallion Parade on at 6pm, Gala Dinner with my table of guests at 7pm
Friday 15th March - Intermediare 1 Test, Performance in Hastings Civic Square at noon, Friday Night Show with Sir Mark Todd and I in a Pas de Deux of sorts
Saturday 16th March - Musical Freestyle Test and Saturday Night Show, Ali Baba to take on a real live bull in the main arena.
Sunday 17th March - recover somewhat and spend the day with sponsors.
It was going to be some show!
With some trepidation I set off from Raglan on the Saturday after sharing a nice family moment with Mum and Dad pitching in to help me pack and help recolour Ali Baba's mane and tail - somewhat successfully I might add! I drove alone to Taupo and Ali Baba and his MiniMe friend Cola got to stay the night at the NEC. I had a great breakfast in the morning shared with my fantastic mates Marcel and Vanessa Veart-Smith and then we were Hastings bound.
I stopped and picked up my dear friend Gill Morley on the way to Church Road Winery for the Holy Grail Event - I needed someone on the ground to help with the saddling up and organising. I wasn't sure what to expect at this boutique venue, nor how Ali Baba would react to his first time out in front of a big crowd. Our first performance was in Portuguese Dress with the tradition saddle and bridle of Ali Baba's home nation. The narrow entrance path to the jumping arena took us right in front of the crowd - there was no room for spooking and there was no turning back!
The warm-up was the size of a 20m circle and in it were two showjumps and 10 ponies getting ready for their class - Ali Baba was in horsie heaven! I was having a job of it keeping him on the job, but once we were out in the main arena on our own he was sublime. It's not easy putting together a performance when the arena you are in is filled with trees and showjumps, with the crowd around the perimeter on three sides but no space in front of them to perform. Adding to that was the fact that my job was to "fill-in" and keep the crowd occupied while the fences were being shifted around for the next class.
My performance went something like canter towards the crowd narrowly avoiding the liverpool fence, canter pirouette followed by tempi changes on a curved line to avoid the double, duck under the low tree and proceed to passage in front of another line of fences, quickly changing path when two men carrying jump poles appear in front of you. It was not easy! However Ali Baba took to it like a pro - for such a young horse who had seen nothing other than a stable and an indoor school 6 months ago, this was a baptism of fire!
The second performance went well too - this time in my dressage get up, which I must say is a heck of a lot easier to ride in. In Portuguese dress it is all one handed and the saddle is a bit like a stock saddle, nice to sit in but not easy to get your legs around the horse and really lift him up under you. So I was pleased to be back with two hands on the reins for the second performance! Ali Baba was a hit with the audience, many of whom were not from the equestrian set. Kids were lining up afterwards wanting their photos taken with him, and with them all milling around his legs he would stand like a rock. He seems to know when he is centre of attention that's for sure.
That night I was very lucky to be able to keep Ali Baba at Kerry and Megan Sixtus' place near the show grounds. They have lovely facilities and are wonderful hosts with nothing being too much trouble - Kerry even helped me clean the truck with his infamous bottle of Kum-Klean spray. I thought Ali Baba would settle well there with his faithful friend Cola, but what ensued was a very sleepless night - he could see the Donkey "possum" and the other miniature horse out grazing in a field near-by and he spend the first 5 hours of the night pacing and whinnying and being generally very upset. I tried huddling in the corner of his stable in a sleeping bag, desperate to keep him quiet and prevent a colic attack or worse. I hate seeing stressed horses. In the end I let the donkey into the stable yard and after realising he was not allowed to try and breed a mule with her, Ali Baba settled right down and I could get some sleep. We stayed on a second night too and each time I would go to check on them Ali Baba would be lying asleep in his box with the miniatures and donkey lying quietly outside his stable. It was gorgeous to see.
When I got to the Horse of the Year Show I was worried at how Ali Baba would settle - his first big show and in a loosebox beside plenty of other stallions looking right out onto a main thoroughfare. Cola of course couldn't come to the show with him, so he had to tough it out. He's such a friendly horse and just loves company both horse and human. I decorated up his stable, the Portuguese Flag on one side, his details and those of my sponsors on the other, plus some flower pots I tried to tend to lovingly each day. It has always surprised me that people don't go to any effort in New Zealand to make their stables look nice at a show - in the USA for instance I think they have staff just for this one task! His stable ended up being quite a drawcard with everybody knowing just who Ali Baba was, where he came from and where he is living just now! I was lucky enough to be able to park in a VIP spot just across from his stable which meant I could keep an eye on him and the other stallions both day and night.
I had great pleasure in watching Michelle and Quentin Haines who are friends of mine from way back when (in fact I was bridesmaid at their wedding) showing their Welsh ponies and their daughter too in the Welsh section. Both Q and M have evented internationally and I have groomed for them in places like Vittel in France and Luhmuhlen in Germany. To see them all dressed up and leading their children made me think how some lives change! Not this one though - I'm happy keeping on keeping on!
On Wednesday my Strapper Renee arrived - all the way from Auckland. Not only is she an efficient groomer of horses, she is a great cleaner-upperer of the truck and she is a mean chef too! In fact a month out from HOY she sent me sample menus and started planning the food! She is also a police officer by trade - so good at crowd control and getting me out of sticky situations at the bar - or so I had hoped. Lucky for her she had packed lots of nice nibbles and cheeses - little did she know she would have Sir Mark Todd in the horse truck on numerous occasions - so she made herself more than useful and hid her excitement well as she got out the cheese, crackers and dip. She even cleaned his riding boots! Now there's some commitment - she never bloody well cleaned mine!
I was pleased with his Prix St Georges test on the Thursday - I think it was the first time he has been strong enough to hold the collected trot throughout the required movements. The atmosphere in the dressage oval - the downfall of so many - was nothing for Ali Baba - I guess if he had survived Church Road it was all much of a muchness, besides there were bigger things to come.
Thursday was also the day Sir Mark Todd made his entrance to the show, and boy was it a media frenzy! TV One was booked to interview him at noon, and Ali Baba was the horse chosen to be the horse he would sit on. There is something quite surreal about your childhood hero (Come on, I mean he's everybody's hero huh?!) climbing aboard your horse and taking him for a spin. Of course we had to do it a bit in secret as dressage rules state nobody is allowed to school your horse for you - but I think it was more a case of Ali Baba schooling Mark - I got him to do Spanish Walk with his new jockey on board - it was a first for Mark! He was impressed with the power and energy of Ali Baba as he piaffed, passaged and caNtered him around the small stable block out the back. As usual, the footage that made it to the TV was pretty crap, but there was a nice photo of the two of them together in the local newspaper Hawkes Bay Today.
A busy Thursday was topped off with the stallion parade. Jo Evans from Mystery Creek Lusitano's and I decided to band together and show both our boys off at the same time. What a spectacle we made with two lovely stallions in their Portuguese gear and us in our traditional Portuguese long skirts and fancy blouses. It was a great night and I had a lot of fun chatting to people on the sidelines waiting for our turn to parade. I remember young Georgina Fryatt and how excited she was to see both Ali Baba and me, well mostly him I think. Her mum Sandy is a mentor of mine and a very good friend - without her my riding career would not have reached the places it has that is for sure. To top it off I won the best presented award - a $500 voucher from Equibreed.
The last part of Thursday night saw the Mortimer family, friends and I in at the Gala Dinner where Mark Todd was the guest speaker, in a very entertaining interview by TV journalist Mark Sainsbury. I had other special guests at my table, my best friend Celine Filbee, Heather McKenzie and Nicole Giger from Portugal too. She had come to New Zealand just to watch the show.
We finished up with a session in the truck where Celine entertained us with her guitar skills and wonderful voice. Hard to believe we fitted so much in that day - but there was plenty more to come yet...