Ever wondered about the logistics of entering an FEI show in France? I feel I'm almost an expert now as Wookie and I have successfully completed our first show "abroad" as they say in England.
When entering an FEI show the first thing you need to do is to be from a country invited to attend. New Zealand tends not to be on the invite list so you need to apply to Dressage New Zealand who then applies to the show to ask if we can join. In the case of this show at Vidauban they accepted two entries from New Zealand. I planned to go with ex-pat Kiwi Lisa White, and thought it would all be plain sailing as Lisa has done quite a few competitions in France before. However Lisa pulled out a few weeks before we were due to leave so I was left without a ride to the show! Stress! Luckily I found Patricia Williams, who had worked in Australia as a pro-groom in the past, and had even groomed for Brett Parbury when he owned Whisper. I did a deal with Trish that I would pay for her horse to come and train her on him each day at the show in exchange for the use of her lorry, driving skills and grooming skills whilst at the show. A fair swap - there was no way I wanted to hire a lorry and do the drive on my own...
You need to go thru an Equine Logistics company to ship your horse across Europe. Horses need an export certificate and veterinary clearance and other documentation to support your journey. Of course you must also have your vaccinations up to date and the horse must travel with a passport. The logistics company also books the ferry and sorts out stabling en route. To get thru to Vidauban we left the stables at 4am and headed to the ferries at Dover - you just rock on up and they put you on the next available sailing.
I had to laugh when we ended up on the ferry parked behind the Irish Army Equitation School lorry packed full of showjumping horses headed for the Sunshine Tour in Spain. Anyone that knows me well will know that I used to be very fond of a Captain in the Irish Army who rode for the Equitation School at one point, and we still remain very close friends and enjoy catching up when we can. So it's a bit of a running joke - the whole men in uniform thing.
So from a 4am start, we hit France at 10am local time and drove through to a stable near Dijon where we stopped for the night - it was a 17 hour journey and Trish did the driving whilst I ate liquorice allsorts and slept. Two of my favourite pleasures! The next day was a further 7 hours of driving and we were finally there - in Provence, the south of France!
If you are wondering how much a trip like this costs - it was $2000 each way for the truck to get us to France, half of that is fuel - the other half is tolls. The ferry is cheap compared to NZL - about $400 each way. And the show itself was about $800 per week to enter which included stabling but not all bedding - not too bad I guess...
The show grounds are a privately owned facility whose scale has to be seen to be believed - I think aside from the two main competition arenas there were another six full size arenas all with the most brilliant fibre sand surface. The grounds are set amongst a huge vineyard and you can hack out for miles too! The flags from the FEI Nations were proudly flying high around the competition grounds - except New Zealand's ours wasn't there - a bad omen I wondered?
When I entered Vidauban was expecting a small show - how wrong was I?! There were 320 horses entered, and 70 of these were in the Grand Prix - which was split into two divisions - GP for Kur and GP for Special, so each class had approx 35 horses in it with only the top 15 going thru to the second round... Add to that the fact that without a world ranking I have to be drawn in the first five to go, and the judges are never easy on unknown riders - I was about to find out just how hard it all can be... The classes included Olympic medallists and many many famous riders. I guess one of the biggest differences from competing at home is that every single horse in the class can do the Grand Prix test with no mistakes, blindfolded with their hind legs tied in a bow. So it's definitely not just about doing a clear round with no mistakes...
The first test I did was an Inter 2, we did a few big mistakes but it was good to see what Wookie is like in the main arena - remember we have not been to any shows together before and we are making our debut on the international stage. The following day was the Grand Prix and I was happy to nail the one tempis and canter zigzag, but I let the piaffe travel too much forward and there were a few other errors - in New Zealand I thought I would have got a 62 or 63%, but I ended up on like a 58% and finished at the bottom end of the class - what a wake up - this is going to be much harder than I thought! But we got to give it another go with the GP consolation class - I spent a couple of days getting the piaffe better with some clicker training and in this test it was much improved. In fact I counted I went up 16 0r 18 marks to be on a 64%, but unfortunately I made enough costly mistakes to lose 18 points in movements I usually can get right, so we ended up back on the same mark! I was consoled by riders like Brett who told me just how hard it was to come to Europe as an unknown and having to earn your stripes. And other riders saying just how tough the marking was at this particular show...
I very much enjoyed the company of Lyn and David Stickland from Gex, near Geneva - followers of my blog will remember that I stayed at their stables a few months back when teaching in France. David is a nuclear physicist and Lyn his wonderful wife runs their stables. Their daughter Clarissa is very talented rider on the French pony squad. Clarissa was competing at Vidauban with two fabulous ponies. Lyn took Trish and me out for a lovely lunch in Saint-Tropez, we took their Mini Cooper convertible over the twisty windy hills to the coast - it was great fun! Lunch was on the beach of course - see the photos below - I was fascinated by the man with the huge cigar! It was a lovely town to look around - really like lifestyles of the rich and famous... I also saw people in the town square playing pitanque- classic French...
Back at the showgrounds I had the pleasure of meeting and working with a top French natural horsemanship trainer Elizabeth de Corbigny and we spent a great morning together showing each other our methods of dealing with troubled horses. It's always great meeting people who are as obsessed with changing the face of the equestrian scene as I am.
The show had a very friendly atmosphere - there was a welcome cocktail party and a DJ playing each night. There were great trade stands and a nice cafe. There were great restaurants nearby and we even borrowed a flash Porsche 4x4 to go to the supermarche for supplies.
My final test was another Grand Prix and I came out being very pleased with in overall. I thought there was some good piaffe, but there were mistakes in the rhythm of the passage, a mistake in the canter depart and a big mistake just before a pirouette. Wookie was very tired but tried very hard and we got the ones, twos and the zigzag bang on. You can imagine my disappointment when one judge scored us a 52%. Quite unbelievable for a test that even Carl Hester said was my best yet. Wookie was cool calm and at least a little bit collected, showed good extensions etc, but was just a little flat and tired. To be scored so low was not only demoralising, it was enough to make you really wonder why you bother.... Luckily the other judges were not so harsh but I still finished on my lowest mark of the show. Back to the drawing board we go.
I decided I really need to improve the piaffe passage tour and a few people suggested I head to Spain to train with Agusti Elias at Bracleona-horses.com I contemplated the shift for about a minute, the sunshine of Barcelona only 7 hours drive away, or heading back to the UK (a 24 hour drive) for more cold and miserable weather - as you can imagine Spain won hands down and so Wookie and Jody's adventure continues to unfold as we loaded him into a new lorry and headed further South....