{"id":15585,"date":"2014-11-10T12:24:12","date_gmt":"2014-11-10T01:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/?p=15585"},"modified":"2015-01-16T15:59:42","modified_gmt":"2015-01-16T04:59:42","slug":"david-cameron-2014-senior-showjumping-champion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/2014\/11\/david-cameron-2014-senior-showjumping-champion\/","title":{"rendered":"David Cameron – 2014 Senior Showjumping Champion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlike his Tory namesake David Cameron did not go to Eton, is not married to a baronet\u2019s daughter nor did he study Philosophy at Oxford. He was born in Forbes, went to Charles Sturt University, taught PDHPE at Parkes High School and shares his life with eventer Tallara Barwick from Willow Tree.<\/p>\n

And at 31 he has just become Australia\u2019s senior showjumping champion.<\/p>\n

In an exciting final round David and the Martin family\u2019s mare, RR Dyranta, beat Tim Clarke and Caltango. It was a very close finish.<\/p>\n

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\"450CameronPoster\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u201cShe\u2019s scopey, careful and really tough,\u201d said Dave, as he drove home from Victoria. \u201cShe jumped well the first day and was coming fifth, the next day she jumped clear which put me second overall going into the final day. Tim, who was leading, had one down in the first round of the Grand Prix whilst Dy and I jumped clear moving us into first position. I was nervous going into the final round but she felt she was jumping well and I was confident she wanted to jump a clean round.\u201d And so she did.<\/p>\n

The Werribee track was designed by Luc Musette and David had been excited at the idea of jumping courses created by the Belgian who was in Australia for the first time.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s built for various Global Champion Tours in Europe this year. For this event I thought he built tough, technical but careful tracks, which seem to be the trend, and we had to ride to a plan as he had a few distance options.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Melbourne Royal a week later they had a couple of rails down \u201cbut Dy still performed well and I was happy with her\u201d.<\/p>\n

By Kashmir van het Schuttershot out of Mavanta, the mare was imported as a four-year-old by the Martins (Bryan, Linda and daughter Bonnie) who run River Ridge Equestrian Park in Wilberforce. Bonnie remembers when she first saw her in Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe had a foal at foot and was unbroken, so they took her out of the stable and free jumped her for us. Right away we knew she had to come home to Australia. We already had Bellerose, her full sister competing, who was proving to be very talented so we were pleased to see it seemed to run in the family. We would have loved to have purchased her foal, too, but it had already been sold. The deal was that Dy was to be broken prior to being sent to quarantine. She and another horse of ours, Top Lady, then spent six months in quarantine outside of London as they\u2019d left Holland and arrived there the day Australia went into EI lockdown.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bonnie and the mare\u2019s first win was in the D-grade at the Gunnedah Ag Show.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was obvious even then how great she was.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"450CameronPoster2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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The Martins began their relationship with David and Tallara when they moved from the NSW Central Coast.<\/p>\n

\u201cI needed another set of hands and legs as well as guidance by someone close to home,\u201d explained Bonnie. \u201cWe\u2019d previously had Bellerose, Rubiarn, Ulone, Dy and Top Lady split between Krissy Harris and Rod Brown. Having a coach, mentor and rider so close to our new home has been excellent. Dysie lives with us full time and we coordinate her riding, fitness and management with Dave.\u201d<\/p>\n

And when opportunities have arisen Bonnie has taken the mares to George Morris’ clinics.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe changed my whole riding philosophy a couple of years ago when I attended on Bellerose. He said \u2018if I had that horse I\u2019d even get into my competition gear again!\u2019 That really got me motivated and he instilled a number of key principles in me. At the most recent clinic he rode Dy. He then understood she\u2019s a slightly tricky mare but very talented. He basically reinforced what we already knew \u2013 that flatwork flatwork flatwork was going to make this horse better.\u201d<\/p>\n

David and Tallara derive great satisfaction from their association with Bonnie and her parents.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs well as Dy I\u2019ve ridden Bellerose and RR Triple X,\u201d said David, \u201cthe relationship works well. It\u2019s nice to be involved with people who are so supportive of the sport. River Ridge runs an exciting breeding programme and this season they\u2019re expecting a foal out of Dy carried by a surrogate mare, and we\u2019re hoping to get another embryo out of her this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Martins\u2019 33 acres on the Hawkesbury River is close to Dave and Tallara\u2019s Wilberforce headquarters belonging to Copabella\u2019s Lesley Hargreaves who has known them since they were teenagers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was delighted when they moved onto Redleaf when Julia went overseas because they\u2019re good people and I knew I could trust them to look after the property and the horses. Julia even entrusted her precious Visage gelding, Vegas, to Dave\u2019s training programme until she was ready for the horse in Europe. And we\u2019re still in partnership with Tallara who campaigns Verdi, another Visage star.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before the Victorian shows David and Tallara had spent a few weeks away in Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe visited our good friends Jamie Winning and Jamie Kermond and watched them compete at a 3* show in Belgium. Then we went to the Global Champions Tour in London. It was a great eye opener to see this level of competition first-hand and made us re-evaluate some of the aspects of our business.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou always hear people say that in Europe they\u2019ve better horses but the biggest thing which stood out to me was the quality of the riders. To become better we need to improve our training and coaching.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a large part of the couple\u2019s business, and earlier this year David received a coaching award.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really enjoy having a chance to mould riders and their horses into elite athletes \u2013 it\u2019s exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those who have helped him in the past are Grant Hughes, George Sanna, David Dobson and Tony Norman \u2013 \u201call have been big influences on me\u201d.<\/p>\n

The next few months are jam packed with Australian events including the Showcase of Showjumping, State Titles, World Cups, Equitana and the Summer Classic.<\/p>\n

And in 2015 New Zealand\u2019s Horse of the Year Show is beckoning.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it works in with our schedule we\u2019ll go, and in the meantime we\u2019ll continue to work on Dy\u2019s rideability. I think she\u2019ll be a serious Grand Prix horse with another twelve months\u2019 experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur long term plan would be to try and take a couple of horses to Europe in the next two years. Jamie and Jamie have set up a good base and have a great network around them which makes the whole idea a lot less daunting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dave would like to acknowledge his sponsors for their ongoing support: Coprice, Ceva, Antares Australia, Horseland Dural, BSM Sport <\/em>and Freejump<\/em><\/p>\n

Words by Suzy Jarratt<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unlike his Tory namesake David Cameron did not go to Eton, is not married to a baronet\u2019s daughter nor did he study Philosophy at Oxford. He was born in Forbes, went to Charles Sturt University, taught PDHPE at Parkes High School and shares his life with eventer Tallara Barwick from Willow Tree. And at 31 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15586,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[978,67],"class_list":["post-15585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-show-jumping","tag-david-cameron","tag-showjumping"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15585"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20608,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15585\/revisions\/20608"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}