THE HORSE MAGAZINE

FEBRUARY 2004

Camperdown 3DE
Out west, in the backblocks of Victoria lies a sleepy little town called Camperdown. Each December, a little committee gets together and hosts a 3DE which to the locals is known as ‘Lakes and Craters’ – lakes and craters because the dressage, the cross country and the showjumping course, lie between two huge, magnificent, spectacularly blue lakes. Lakes where there were once volcanoes!! The rim hauntingly circumnavigates the little cluster of trucks and horses and competitors and officials who have come not just from the far flung corners of Australia but some of the judges come from as far away as Japan.
For me, I was 17 hours from home on my third trip to Victoria to compete in four weeks. What was I thinking?!! Normally we riders in NSW have the Berrima 3DE just south of Sydney to try and qualify young up-and-coming horses for big-time competition the following year. This year, Berrima decided it had not received enough entries, and cancelled. Australia is currently trying to qualify horses up the grades in accordance with FEI international rules. Quite frankly, those rules were made for the Northern Hemisphere’s competition circuits, and here in Australia, it is absolutely impossible. So we get exemptions and are allowed to go up grades without fulfilling the criteria. In this day and age in Australia, which is more litigious than the USA, it’s got to take the Nobel Prize for stupidity!!
However without the exemptions, the whole sport would just bog and probably die in not more than 18 months. To get an exemption you never-the-less have to try and get some qualifications, and so when Berrima cancelled many of us were really in need of some alternative competition if the up-and-coming horses of 2004 were to stay on track.
The Camperdown 3DE is synonymous with Barry and Lyn Roycroft so a number of us put the question to Barry of staging a CCI** , in other words an internationally accredited Intermediate 3DE. Camperdown had initially only planned to run an Intermediate ODE although it was to have international recognition – CIC**. Unbelievably Camperdown decided the need was important and so just three weeks out made the huge commitment to change their entire format so as to help riders qualify. This was a gesture that reeked of country hospitality and a very real awareness of the problems facing the Australian Eventing riders as they battle to maintain a standard that will produce the Olympic gold medallists of tomorrow.
This rider awareness and hospitality is pretty well the single standout prevailing Camperdown attitude which greeted everyone who came to the event. It was more like an event of the 80s – the committee was flat broke and held a dinner on the Friday night where they auctioned off a lot of donations, including quite generous contributions of Cosequin etc. from Mark Day of Nature Vet, who were major sponsors. It was a good night and the riders (also broke) got into the swing of it buying tubes of Nature Vet’s great new wormer paste below market price. At the end of the night, four to five thousand dollars had been raised which all helped.
In conjunction with the International classes, there were also other grades, including junior and preliminary classes, all competing in a one day format. In this report however I’m just commenting on the CCI*, CCI** and the CIC** which were the top three classes. For those of you struggling with the terminology – CCI* is a Novice 3DE, CCI** is an Intermediate 3DE, and CIC** is an Intermediate ODE. Confused? We all are.
The CCI* was first. Will Enzinger is on a roll at the moment and cleared out into the lead with a score of 49.57 penalties. He was riding ESB Irish Doctrine. This Irish sporhorse was purpose bred by Vanessa Hawkins, and did a great cross country and was the only horse to showjump penalty free in this class, to lead from start to finish. Second place went to Loot Taboot ridden by me! This is an interesting horse owned by Bruce Reed whyo also owns the old sailing boat in Sydney Harbour, Bounty. Hence the horse’s name… well sort of. Loot Taboot has good dressage, a great gallop and plenty of air in his jump but a really unconventional technique in the air. It’s taken the two of us ages to sort of sort it out and even longer for us to start to develop confidence. Anyhow he’s only six years old, and I was absolutely delighted with this result. Who knows what the future holds?
Third place went to Hollie Sumner on Noble One. The dressage wasn’t Hollie’s best phase but she and Noble One produced a great cross country round to be second fastest of the day and with just one rail down in the show jumping claimed 3rd place.
And so to the top class being the CCI**. Shane Rose did an awesome test on Cleddau Bobby Dazzler for a score of 40.80 penalties to lead on the first day. Shane has been out of action for months with a badly broken leg and Bobby Dazzler is still very young and the cross country course (magnificently built by Wayne Copping with help from some other very skilled operators) was big, technical hill and at the end of the day represented the top end of a two star course. Too difficult for Bobby Dazzler at this stage of his career and Shane had to walk home.
Lauren Schodel is just 16 years of age and hails from Queensland, and has been spending some time in the Hunter Valley based with Tarsha Hammond. She and her horse, Smooth Criminal look awesome. After the dressage they were in third position, but after the cross country stepped into the lead by 1 penalty point only. This led to a fingernail biting finale on day three, when Lauren needed to showjump clear to stay in the lead. Well she didn’t. One rail down and second place was pretty bloody amazing for a 16 year old at this level.
First place went to Diablo Heart ridden by me. This is a cracker of a little black Thoroughbred first started out by George Riley some four years ago. George then got swallowed up by the career thing and is now a policeman (god help us all!).
Over the past few years George has had time to do a bit of showjumping and so Diablo Heart (‘Gonzo’) kept ticking over. I knew he was there and always rated the horse. I took a couple of overseas buyers to see him but no-one really fell in love with him. Then my working pupil Cassia Montgomery wanted something special so I got George to send Gonzo up for a couple of weeks. Gonzo turned out not to be the most polite individual I have ever met, and with Cassia it just wasn’t a partnership meant to happen.
I took a deep breath and took over the ride. Well we clicked and what a rip snortin little cracker he has turned out to be. He has won his last five starts! Gonzo has stunning potential in the dressage arena, although I haven’t yet managed to extract his best. He’s a real toughie. I think being plaited and looking as though he is in a ‘tutu’ in the dressage arena has certain psychological complications.
On cross country however its another story. He goes like a ballistic bullet, is very agile, creative and brave. It’s here that the toughie is totally at ease and at Camperdown he scorched around the cross country for the fastest time and to move up into second place. Showjumping he is careful, has great technique and a real talent for basculing and using his back. He jumped the only clear showjump round of the day in the top class to put pressure on Lauren and Smooth Criminal. Lauren then had one down and little Diablo Heart chalked up his fifth consecutive win. 2004 should be a big year for this little black toughie!
Third place in this class went to Clemi Mann on Newsman. This was home territory for Clemi and she is a talented young rider who is at a bit of a crossroads. Rider good, horse good, how good do they want to be? It’s not more riding or better horses that will see her move into the top group of Australian riders, it’s focus. The information a top rider takes on board and the care with which they carry out their practice sessions every single day is what turns the key and so opens the door into the next level of sophistication.
Clemi Mann is what we Australians boast about, wild talent and we do have it in abundance. Personally, I hope she now becomes something we don’t have in abundance… an elite sophisticated rider who is checking off excess baggage as she moves into the fast lane where the real hunting pack is out after Olympic gold medals. She certainly has the talent.
Fourth in this class was Sam Lyle on Royal Marine. Every time I see Sam on this horse, I always think what a beautiful horse. To date they haven’t produced amazing results but sometimes you do just have to be patient. I think Sam will be pleased enough with the result.
The final class was the CIC**, which nearly went around the same cross country course as the CCI** except they didn’t have to do the steeplechase or the roads and tracks. Emily Anker won the dressage on ESB Irish Endeavour and was second on Keniski. Emily is currently going out with Will Enzinger and they are both producing awesome dressage. These two horses of Emily’s are really magnificent. Emily has ridden in the top classes in previous years and this now is her young team of carefully selected, carefully schooled Olympic aspirants. All class and really really worth following…
Unfortunately at Camperdown both horses pick up 20 penalties on the cross country and so ended the competition in 3rd and 4th place. There was a bit of a story to those penalties but at the time of writing, my foggy memory just won’t pull out the details! Oh well.
The winner of this class at the end of the day was Wendy Schaeffer on Koyuna Sun Magic. This is a beautiful beautiful horse and Wendy in full flight is in a league of her own. She did end up winning the class by quite a margin, being the only combination to make time on the cross country, and one of only two clear rounds in the showjumping. Wendy’s top horses continue to experience bad luck in terms of minor injuries and mishaps just before major selection trials. It’s now nearly eight years since she steered Australia into our second consecutive Olympic Team gold medal on her pony club horse, Sunburst. Also remember that had the rules not changed between Barcelona and Atlanta, she would have also won an individual Olympic gold medal (Bastards!) Anyhow, Wendy is a wonderful example of relentlessly pursuing the dream even when no one else in their right mind could justify the hopelessness of it all. You just have to somewhere in the dark depths of your soul have a tiny tiny spark that just will not, cannot, not ever, be crushed to nothing. That’s Wendy and that’s why her gold medal was no fluke (no such thing as a fluked gold medal!)
Second in this class was Jonathon McLean on Woodmount Lanark – Jonothon is well bred being a brother to Andrew McLean, who is not only our leading theorist on horse behaviour but rode in an Australian Eventing Trans Tasman team himself.
I also competed in this class on a fabulous young Thoroughbred stallion, Gwaihir Zodiac. Unfortunately I finished the day with ‘retired’ alongside my name after the cross country. Embarassing! Zac did a reasonable dressage test, although the judges didn’t really think it was that good!!! Oh well you get that. Zac is the quietest horse I have ever ridden on cross country and I still felt we had a chance of doing well considering how difficult the course was. So out of the start box Zac and I went, with me riding him from hip to shoulder right from the start (if you relax for a breather Zac will pull up and start grazing on a loose rein! Bloody amazing.)
The third fence was a big Trakehner which had caused heaps of trouble. I came across it at a 45 degree angle and Zac jumped it beautifully. Yeah right, I think. I have a sneaky line to the next fence but as I look up, I realise that the gap I intend to go through is packed with spectators. One of those spectators is Barry Roycroft. I make a bee line for Barry at flat gallop. Not quite the line I had wanted but pretty slick anyway and what’s the harm with a little bit of fun along the way?
About 40 yards away the crowd gets nervous and starts bolting back over a fenceline. Barry holds his ground until the last minute and then scuttles back over the fence in a very undignified manner, at the last minute yelling out encouragement as I whoosh past. Actually some of the words he used weren’t all that encouraging! Zac picks off fence distance, and I just sit a little light so as not to over-ride the spot. SHOOT! What a mistake. The moment I soften, Zac complains about the uphill effort, complains about the speed and I watch in dismay as the distance I had intended to take off from – which is now only three strides away – disappear. Alarm bells are going off everywhere in my mind as a I claw my ways around impending disaster, trying to activate damage control. The three full on gallop strides turn into five strides and we’re at the base of a huge spread with no power and my heart is plain jumping straight out of my mouth. Hiccup and Zac sort of lurches or frog hops over and we land up the right way and on the other side of the fence, somehow.
I am furious with Zac and belt him on the bottom with my whip (for encouragement!) We just can’t jump like that and survive for long at this level. Anyhow Zac gets inspried and zooms up over the next two uphill fences with zest. Then it’s a long downhill gallop to a set of difficult enough steps. We go the direct way, taking on the arrowhead at the top. It’s pretty ugly but Zac gamely keeps going, he is honest and does have real jumping talent, just a bit baby and not super keen on hard work. I make the mistake of patting him and saying ‘good boy’.
The next fence is number 10. It’s again made of cotton wood, is a keyhole and has to be jumped up a steep hill. It’s quite big, as in tall, and I know Zac will be tempted to chip a short stride in front. I see a great disance and whack Zac on the bottom just for encouragement, and just so there will be no getting mixed up this time. We get to a perfect distance and I congratulate myself as I wait that that rhythmic boom as horse and rider leave the ground in perfect synergy and arc up effortlessly over a seriously impressive fence. Nope! No such luck. There is a sickening braking of speed as Zac chips, then frantic crashing as he now finds his chest is against the front of the fence, the a god almighty gravity defying lurch as he does a vertical take off, then lots of crackling as he takes hours of worth of fence building endeavour with him. Miraculously we and in one piece on the other side again, upright and seemingly in one piece. The keyhole fence on the other hand looks like someone has just scored a direct hit on it with a bazooka!1 At first I am just so relieved we’re both still in one piece and then within a millisecond, I am totally furious with Zac and then a millisecond later I know we’re still on song to try and win this competition, as long as I don’t hang about procrastinating!
I am up over Zac’s neck yelling blue murder at him when I realise that I can’t close my right hand properly. I study the phenomena a little more closely and realise my middel finger on my right hand on the middle knuckly is seriously dislocated. What’s more the top half of the dislocaation has slid down the stump of the finger and is now protruding at right anles lying straight back across the palm of my hand. I nearly faint when I realise what I am looking at. My next thought is ‘if this happened to Bill Roycroft, he would just keep on going!’
Zac in the meantime was suspicious I was not happy with his last little effort and is galloping along with a sudden burst of inspiration. My next thoguht was ‘well bugger Bill Roycroft, I need attention and I need it NOW! So to the astonishment of the crowd, Zac changes course from the next fence and gallops straight towards the ambulance. Anyhow a lady doctor is pretty amazing and fixes the finger in about ten minutes flat. I am then left trying to explain to everyone that yes, I’m fine and no I have nothing to show and no I’m not a big girl and it really really was scary. Oh well. Anyhow it was a great event run by some great Australians and Zac and I will be back.
Cheers,
HEATH

Ryans Rave Index

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	AUSTRALIA'S NUMBER ONE EQUESTRIAN MAGAZINE
		FEBRUARY 2004 Camperdown 3DE Out west, in the backblocks of Victoria lies a sleepy little town called Camperdown. Each December, a little committee gets together and hosts a 3DE which to the locals is known as ‘Lakes and Craters’ – lakes and craters because the dressage, the cross country and the showjumping course, lie between two huge, magnificent, spectacularly blue lakes. Lakes where there were once volcanoes!! The rim hauntingly circumnavigates the little cluster of trucks and horses and competitors and officials who have come not just from the far flung corners of Australia but some of the judges come from as far away as Japan. For me, I was 17 hours from home on my third trip to Victoria to compete in four weeks. What was I thinking?!! Normally we riders in NSW have the Berrima 3DE just south of Sydney to try and qualify young up-and-coming horses for big-time competition the following year. This year, Berrima decided it had not received enough entries, and cancelled. Australia is currently trying to qualify horses up the grades in accordance with FEI international rules. Quite frankly, those rules were made for the Northern Hemisphere’s competition circuits, and here in Australia, it is absolutely impossible. So we get exemptions and are allowed to go up grades without fulfilling the criteria. In this day and age in Australia, which is more litigious than the USA, it’s got to take the Nobel Prize for stupidity!! However without the exemptions, the whole sport would just bog and probably die in not more than 18 months. To get an exemption you never-the-less have to try and get some qualifications, and so when Berrima cancelled many of us were really in need of some alternative competition if the up-and-coming horses of 2004 were to stay on track. The Camperdown 3DE is synonymous with Barry and Lyn Roycroft so a number of us put the question to Barry of staging a CCI , in other words an internationally accredited Intermediate 3DE. Camperdown had initially only planned to run an Intermediate ODE although it was to have international recognition – CIC. Unbelievably Camperdown decided the need was important and so just three weeks out made the huge commitment to change their entire format so as to help riders qualify. This was a gesture that reeked of country hospitality and a very real awareness of the problems facing the Australian Eventing riders as they battle to maintain a standard that will produce the Olympic gold medallists of tomorrow. This rider awareness and hospitality is pretty well the single standout prevailing Camperdown attitude which greeted everyone who came to the event. It was more like an event of the 80s – the committee was flat broke and held a dinner on the Friday night where they auctioned off a lot of donations, including quite generous contributions of Cosequin etc. from Mark Day of Nature Vet, who were major sponsors. It was a good night and the riders (also broke) got into the swing of it buying tubes of Nature Vet’s great new wormer paste below market price. At the end of the night, four to five thousand dollars had been raised which all helped. In conjunction with the International classes, there were also other grades, including junior and preliminary classes, all competing in a one day format. In this report however I’m just commenting on the CCI, CCI* and the CIC** which were the top three classes. For those of you struggling with the terminology – CCI* is a Novice 3DE, CCI is an Intermediate 3DE, and CIC is an Intermediate ODE. Confused? We all are. The CCI* was first. Will Enzinger is on a roll at the moment and cleared out into the lead with a score of 49.57 penalties. He was riding ESB Irish Doctrine. This Irish sporhorse was purpose bred by Vanessa Hawkins, and did a great cross country and was the only horse to showjump penalty free in this class, to lead from start to finish. Second place went to Loot Taboot ridden by me! This is an interesting horse owned by Bruce Reed whyo also owns the old sailing boat in Sydney Harbour, Bounty. Hence the horse’s name… well sort of. Loot Taboot has good dressage, a great gallop and plenty of air in his jump but a really unconventional technique in the air. It’s taken the two of us ages to sort of sort it out and even longer for us to start to develop confidence. Anyhow he’s only six years old, and I was absolutely delighted with this result. Who knows what the future holds? Third place went to Hollie Sumner on Noble One. The dressage wasn’t Hollie’s best phase but she and Noble One produced a great cross country round to be second fastest of the day and with just one rail down in the show jumping claimed 3rd place. And so to the top class being the CCI. Shane Rose did an awesome test on Cleddau Bobby Dazzler for a score of 40.80 penalties to lead on the first day. Shane has been out of action for months with a badly broken leg and Bobby Dazzler is still very young and the cross country course (magnificently built by Wayne Copping with help from some other very skilled operators) was big, technical hill and at the end of the day represented the top end of a two star course. Too difficult for Bobby Dazzler at this stage of his career and Shane had to walk home. Lauren Schodel is just 16 years of age and hails from Queensland, and has been spending some time in the Hunter Valley based with Tarsha Hammond. She and her horse, Smooth Criminal look awesome. After the dressage they were in third position, but after the cross country stepped into the lead by 1 penalty point only. This led to a fingernail biting finale on day three, when Lauren needed to showjump clear to stay in the lead. Well she didn’t. One rail down and second place was pretty bloody amazing for a 16 year old at this level. First place went to Diablo Heart ridden by me. This is a cracker of a little black Thoroughbred first started out by George Riley some four years ago. George then got swallowed up by the career thing and is now a policeman (god help us all!). Over the past few years George has had time to do a bit of showjumping and so Diablo Heart (‘Gonzo’) kept ticking over. I knew he was there and always rated the horse. I took a couple of overseas buyers to see him but no-one really fell in love with him. Then my working pupil Cassia Montgomery wanted something special so I got George to send Gonzo up for a couple of weeks. Gonzo turned out not to be the most polite individual I have ever met, and with Cassia it just wasn’t a partnership meant to happen. I took a deep breath and took over the ride. Well we clicked and what a rip snortin little cracker he has turned out to be. He has won his last five starts! Gonzo has stunning potential in the dressage arena, although I haven’t yet managed to extract his best. He’s a real toughie. I think being plaited and looking as though he is in a ‘tutu’ in the dressage arena has certain psychological complications. On cross country however its another story. He goes like a ballistic bullet, is very agile, creative and brave. It’s here that the toughie is totally at ease and at Camperdown he scorched around the cross country for the fastest time and to move up into second place. Showjumping he is careful, has great technique and a real talent for basculing and using his back. He jumped the only clear showjump round of the day in the top class to put pressure on Lauren and Smooth Criminal. Lauren then had one down and little Diablo Heart chalked up his fifth consecutive win. 2004 should be a big year for this little black toughie! Third place in this class went to Clemi Mann on Newsman. This was home territory for Clemi and she is a talented young rider who is at a bit of a crossroads. Rider good, horse good, how good do they want to be? It’s not more riding or better horses that will see her move into the top group of Australian riders, it’s focus. The information a top rider takes on board and the care with which they carry out their practice sessions every single day is what turns the key and so opens the door into the next level of sophistication. Clemi Mann is what we Australians boast about, wild talent and we do have it in abundance. Personally, I hope she now becomes something we don’t have in abundance… an elite sophisticated rider who is checking off excess baggage as she moves into the fast lane where the real hunting pack is out after Olympic gold medals. She certainly has the talent. Fourth in this class was Sam Lyle on Royal Marine. Every time I see Sam on this horse, I always think what a beautiful horse. To date they haven’t produced amazing results but sometimes you do just have to be patient. I think Sam will be pleased enough with the result. The final class was the CIC, which nearly went around the same cross country course as the CCI** except they didn’t have to do the steeplechase or the roads and tracks. Emily Anker won the dressage on ESB Irish Endeavour and was second on Keniski. Emily is currently going out with Will Enzinger and they are both producing awesome dressage. These two horses of Emily’s are really magnificent. Emily has ridden in the top classes in previous years and this now is her young team of carefully selected, carefully schooled Olympic aspirants. All class and really really worth following… Unfortunately at Camperdown both horses pick up 20 penalties on the cross country and so ended the competition in 3rd and 4th place. There was a bit of a story to those penalties but at the time of writing, my foggy memory just won’t pull out the details! Oh well. The winner of this class at the end of the day was Wendy Schaeffer on Koyuna Sun Magic. This is a beautiful beautiful horse and Wendy in full flight is in a league of her own. She did end up winning the class by quite a margin, being the only combination to make time on the cross country, and one of only two clear rounds in the showjumping. Wendy’s top horses continue to experience bad luck in terms of minor injuries and mishaps just before major selection trials. It’s now nearly eight years since she steered Australia into our second consecutive Olympic Team gold medal on her pony club horse, Sunburst. Also remember that had the rules not changed between Barcelona and Atlanta, she would have also won an individual Olympic gold medal (Bastards!) Anyhow, Wendy is a wonderful example of relentlessly pursuing the dream even when no one else in their right mind could justify the hopelessness of it all. You just have to somewhere in the dark depths of your soul have a tiny tiny spark that just will not, cannot, not ever, be crushed to nothing. That’s Wendy and that’s why her gold medal was no fluke (no such thing as a fluked gold medal!) Second in this class was Jonathon McLean on Woodmount Lanark – Jonothon is well bred being a brother to Andrew McLean, who is not only our leading theorist on horse behaviour but rode in an Australian Eventing Trans Tasman team himself. I also competed in this class on a fabulous young Thoroughbred stallion, Gwaihir Zodiac. Unfortunately I finished the day with ‘retired’ alongside my name after the cross country. Embarassing! Zac did a reasonable dressage test, although the judges didn’t really think it was that good!!! Oh well you get that. Zac is the quietest horse I have ever ridden on cross country and I still felt we had a chance of doing well considering how difficult the course was. So out of the start box Zac and I went, with me riding him from hip to shoulder right from the start (if you relax for a breather Zac will pull up and start grazing on a loose rein! Bloody amazing.) The third fence was a big Trakehner which had caused heaps of trouble. I came across it at a 45 degree angle and Zac jumped it beautifully. Yeah right, I think. I have a sneaky line to the next fence but as I look up, I realise that the gap I intend to go through is packed with spectators. One of those spectators is Barry Roycroft. I make a bee line for Barry at flat gallop. Not quite the line I had wanted but pretty slick anyway and what’s the harm with a little bit of fun along the way? About 40 yards away the crowd gets nervous and starts bolting back over a fenceline. Barry holds his ground until the last minute and then scuttles back over the fence in a very undignified manner, at the last minute yelling out encouragement as I whoosh past. Actually some of the words he used weren’t all that encouraging! Zac picks off fence distance, and I just sit a little light so as not to over-ride the spot. SHOOT! What a mistake. The moment I soften, Zac complains about the uphill effort, complains about the speed and I watch in dismay as the distance I had intended to take off from – which is now only three strides away – disappear. Alarm bells are going off everywhere in my mind as a I claw my ways around impending disaster, trying to activate damage control. The three full on gallop strides turn into five strides and we’re at the base of a huge spread with no power and my heart is plain jumping straight out of my mouth. Hiccup and Zac sort of lurches or frog hops over and we land up the right way and on the other side of the fence, somehow. I am furious with Zac and belt him on the bottom with my whip (for encouragement!) We just can’t jump like that and survive for long at this level. Anyhow Zac gets inspried and zooms up over the next two uphill fences with zest. Then it’s a long downhill gallop to a set of difficult enough steps. We go the direct way, taking on the arrowhead at the top. It’s pretty ugly but Zac gamely keeps going, he is honest and does have real jumping talent, just a bit baby and not super keen on hard work. I make the mistake of patting him and saying ‘good boy’. The next fence is number 10. It’s again made of cotton wood, is a keyhole and has to be jumped up a steep hill. It’s quite big, as in tall, and I know Zac will be tempted to chip a short stride in front. I see a great disance and whack Zac on the bottom just for encouragement, and just so there will be no getting mixed up this time. We get to a perfect distance and I congratulate myself as I wait that that rhythmic boom as horse and rider leave the ground in perfect synergy and arc up effortlessly over a seriously impressive fence. Nope! No such luck. There is a sickening braking of speed as Zac chips, then frantic crashing as he now finds his chest is against the front of the fence, the a god almighty gravity defying lurch as he does a vertical take off, then lots of crackling as he takes hours of worth of fence building endeavour with him. Miraculously we and in one piece on the other side again, upright and seemingly in one piece. The keyhole fence on the other hand looks like someone has just scored a direct hit on it with a bazooka!1 At first I am just so relieved we’re both still in one piece and then within a millisecond, I am totally furious with Zac and then a millisecond later I know we’re still on song to try and win this competition, as long as I don’t hang about procrastinating! I am up over Zac’s neck yelling blue murder at him when I realise that I can’t close my right hand properly. I study the phenomena a little more closely and realise my middel finger on my right hand on the middle knuckly is seriously dislocated. What’s more the top half of the dislocaation has slid down the stump of the finger and is now protruding at right anles lying straight back across the palm of my hand. I nearly faint when I realise what I am looking at. My next thought is ‘if this happened to Bill Roycroft, he would just keep on going!’ Zac in the meantime was suspicious I was not happy with his last little effort and is galloping along with a sudden burst of inspiration. My next thoguht was ‘well bugger Bill Roycroft, I need attention and I need it NOW! So to the astonishment of the crowd, Zac changes course from the next fence and gallops straight towards the ambulance. Anyhow a lady doctor is pretty amazing and fixes the finger in about ten minutes flat. I am then left trying to explain to everyone that yes, I’m fine and no I have nothing to show and no I’m not a big girl and it really really was scary. Oh well. Anyhow it was a great event run by some great Australians and Zac and I will be back. Cheers, HEATH Ryans Rave Index