Equitana — Amazing

Published by Tammy under Clinics, Competitions, Forums, Seminars, Special News. Tags: , , , , , .
Edward Gal rid­ing May­field Pzazz
Edward Gal & May­field Pzazz

Well I must say.… this Equi­tana was absolutely AMAZING. Besides the thou­sands of trade stalls with things I’ve neverseen before, the huge vari­ety of food vans and I mean huge, literally 30 or more with all dif­fer­ent kinds of food, the dif­fer­ent demon­stra­tions from mounted police, polo, cam­p­draft­ing, showjump­ing, cross-country, west­ern, tiny lit­tle minia­tures to my favorite, the dres­sage, the mem­ory that will stay with me for­ever were the two vis­it­ing world num­ber one rid­ers, Edward Gal and Hans Peter Min­der­houd. To me I wit­nessed an exam­ple of per­fec­tion in dres­sage riding.

Hans Peter Min­der­houd & DP Weltmieser
Hans Peter Min­der­houd & DP Weltmieser

They were per­fect. Easy to under­stand, funny, very friendly and just plain fan­tas­tic. They did a few out­side demon­stra­tions but the main event was the Mas­ter­class on the Sat­ur­day morn­ing. Then the high­light of the event was each rider rid­ing a bor­rowed horse to present a rid­den freestyle. I felt like I was in Europe watch­ing per­fec­tion. The atmos­phere was amaz­ing. The crowd could have watched it for­ever. I feel so priv­i­leged to have such world class rid­ers come to our coun­try and offer us their knowl­edge. It was an absolute honor to see and meet such amaz­ing rid­ers. Some high­light points from Edward and Hans Peter were:

    • Tran­si­tions to walk – make him active first
    • Always feel like you can go for­ward after com­ing back
    • If you ask an aid and no reac­tion, come imme­di­ately with the second
    • The horse needs to try for you – even if it doesn’t work all the time. That’s ok.
    • Bend him until you feel him give the inside rein – don’t give first. Make the horse give first
    • Take a long time to pre­pare the horse for the exer­cises. Only do it when he is ready
    • Very impor­tant to get more expres­sion in the movement
    • Get active with­out get­ting slow or fast
    • Always get the horse think­ing forward
    • Can­ter pirou­ette – Very impor­tant for the horse to keep think­ing for­ward and not to think turn by themselves.
Brett Par­bery & DP Welt­mieser (Rabbit)
Hans Peter teach­ing Edward

The rest………… you just had to be there. Any­way, I could go on about them forever.

The other high­light for me was watch­ing Brett Par­bery. To me, another exam­ple of great rid­ing. Truly moti­vat­ing. And his secret stash of an 18.2h, yes 18.2h chest­nut geld­ing – wow – a piaffe freak. Brett’s hop­ing this horse will be his next inter­na­tional super star. Brett, we all have our fin­gers crossed for you. What an amaz­ing horse. Hav­ing just come back from the Aust dres­sage cham­pi­onships and see­ing the grand prix, I was think­ing here we go again, the same old, same old.

The win­ner — Heath Ryan and Regardez Moi
Never a bad seat — see it all on the big screen

But wrong.…… boy did the rid­ers step it up a gear for Equi­tana. The atmos­phere was spec­tac­u­lar and the horses rose to the occa­sion. The Kur music was super, the horses and rid­ers — even more super. They really did save their best till last. The enter­tain­ment was again amaz­ing. Never before had I been to such an amaz­ing event which involved horses and music. The vio­lin­ist to the didgeri­doos and their 8yo son bash­ing away on the drums and danc­ing, what tal­ent for an 8yo.

Chris Chugg & Dia­mond B Vigo
Car­riage Driving

The showjump­ing was HUGE. How they get them­selves over those jumps amazes me. Then came the car­riage dri­ving. Wild and wooly. Nearly a few stacks but very excit­ing and to see the world num­ber one Aust dri­ver Boyd Exell was again an honor to see such world class dri­ving. And who would have thought a dres­sage rider would learn such amaz­ing trot pole tech­niques from an Olympic even­ter……. Clay­ton Fred­er­icks was great. Can’t wait to try some of his methods.

Trick Rid­ing Championships
Breed Demon­stra­tion

The trade stalls – so many. And so crowded. It took us nearly a whole day to get through them all. And I’m super happy I man­aged to pick myself up some great bar­gains. But the other really great thing to me was walk­ing around the place where our 2000 Olympics were held. I can only imag­ine what it was like those 11 years ago with mil­lions of peo­ple from all around the world walk­ing around. There was the cen­tre piece where the Olympic flame was held, all around it on the ground are the name plaques of each gold, sil­ver and bronze medal­ist from the 2000 games. A really cool thing to see.

Hans Peter, Tammy & Edward
Vic­to­ria Welch hav­ing a les­son with Edward

All in all a great time.  And a spe­cial thankyou to Holly and her amaz­ing fam­ily for allow­ing us to stay with them while in Syd­ney. It truly felt like we were in a five star hotel. With­out that I don’t think I could have gone.

Sarah Moir from the String Angels With lib­erty horse Okkie

 

Edward Gal & Hans Peter Minderhoud

The big screen