Welcome to my first blog of my new website. I'm going to start with an insight into my campaign to represent New Zealand at the World Equestrian Games in Kentucky 2010.

Ever since I first rode for my county in 1995 in Japan, I never lost the burning desire to wear the Silver Fern and ride for my nation. After winning many international derby competitions and distinguishing myself with high placings in Australian International shows, the next step is of course to ride for NZ at the Olympics or the WEG. I managed to qualify Landioso for WEG in Aachen, Germany in 2006, but he was 20 years old by this stage and was not selected to attend.

This time round I had high hopes for Whisper and myself, and we managed to meet the international qualifications in March giving us the go ahead from the FEI to be eligible to enter. However ESNZ does not recognise the international qualifying standard and demand a higher standard from its riders. Whether or not this is a good idea is up for debate, but suffice to say that other developing dressage nations such as Ireland and the Dominican Republic, South Africa etc all send riders who have reached the FEI standard. New Zealand was first represented at WEG in 1998 - I was there as a groom for the Irish 3DE team. Since then we have sent an individual twice, but nobody for the last 8 years.

After finishing third at the Sydney CDI I decided to head up to America to chase one more qualifying score. However I had to wait to see if any shows in the USA would be approved by ESNZ so I spent the whole of May at home working my backside off and selling two of my best horses in order to raise money for the trip.

I finally was given notice at the end of May that there was a show on June 20th that would suit ESNZ for me to gain my final mark. However this left no time at all for me, I had to fly to Australia to pick up Whisper, putting him on the next available flight which was two weeks later (they fly once per week and it takes the best part of a week to clear the blood screenings prior to travel). This put us in Los Angeles less than 6 days prior to the show, and with two days quarantine and then an 11 hour trailer journey north to Sacramento, we only had one day of recovery time before we needed to produce a World Class performance.

I spent two days in Los Angles waiting for Whisper to clear quarantine. The first day I spent sleeping off jetlag and the second day Ike Unsworth of Mount View Sport Horses and myself kicked around Universal Studios and finished off with beers and a feed at Hooters - that was the tourist side of the trip taken care of!

The next day I started the Iong journey north to Sacramento with Whisper in a hired gooseneck trailer. I got to the showgrounds just on dark that first night - Rancho Murieta may sound romantic, but it's really a lacklustre venue in the middle of the desert. My RV accommodation had not arrived so I spent my first night sleeping on the steel floor of the empty gooseneck.

By the next morning I was very stiff and sore, an old back injury that had been giving me jip on the aeroplane and long truck journey north decided to flare up so badly I was struggling to walk, and couldn't manage to lift water buckets for Whisper. I was even more distressed to walk him out of his box and find that he was on three legs - a hoof infection! Apparently these can flair up on the 'plane. So here I was, alone in the American desert. No friends, no phone, no groom, just one broken rider and an equally broken horse.

Words can't describe the loneliness and distress I felt that week at Murieta. The show was a CDI *, but there was only one judge on the GP class, and there were only two of us entered. I had pinned all of my hopes and dreams of a lifetime on a small, dusty, rundown show with not even 10 people in the audience. I had flown my wonderful horse to the United States of America, at a round trip costing of about $50,000 for the flights alone, and the show I was sent to was of a far lesser standard than I would have got at Showfields in North Waikato on a rainy winters day. And to make matters worse, in the end neither Whisper nor myself recovered in time to ride a test here.

I was beginning to regret ever having tried to get myself to the Games - but I knew deep down whatever happened was going to be character building, and I was, after all, treading where most people would not dream to tread.