Saddleworld Dressage Festival at Werribee

This is to be my last trip of 2011. Hav­ing flown to Syd­ney and back twice in the once month then Mel­bourne last week­end, I’m offi­cially over the trav­el­ling for this year. (Until Jan­u­ary at least when we fly to Perth – but that’s another story)
Rep­re­sent­ing Cyber­horse, I flew to Mel­bourne for the Sad­dle­world Dres­sage Fes­ti­val at Wer­ribee and what a great com­pe­ti­tion it was. It was basi­cally the Vic­to­rian State Cham­pi­onships. With a stack of

tradestalls and I mean a stack. Super spe­cials and great things that we don’t see here in QLD. But after spend­ing too much $$ at nation­als then Equi­tana, I was under instruc­tions to win­dow shop only. (Grabbed a heap of busi­ness cards though)
The com­pe­ti­tion was super in all classes. From pre­lim through to grand prix — what a great show. Rachel Sanna did it again with a near per­fect test on the super Jay­bee Alabaster. Our own Chantelle Wigan was close behind for third place. Her horse Ferero is such a beau­ti­ful mov­ing horse — he just gets a lit­tle excited dur­ing pre­sen­ta­tions the poor thing. But a great effort from Chantelle. Such a plea­sure to watch one of our own. But I think the high­light of the com­pe­ti­tion for me was the Para rid­ers. They all did a bril­liant job. Alot on bor­rowed horses from pre­lim ones

through to ex cham­pi­ons like Don Armani, World­wide PB just to name a few. It was an Olympic qual­i­fier so the classes were quite big. And the sup­port crews were amaz­ing. Many peo­ple gath­ered to watch these amaz­ing rid­ers over­come their chal­lenges and ride their tests. Rid­ers came from Japan, USA and NZ. Again we had a cou­ple of QLD’ers com­pet­ing. So it was really great to pull up a chair and watch them. Or in my case, a cam­era. (Never leave home with­out that) The only set­back being a huge storm which threat­ened the com­pe­ti­tion for an hour or so before finally unleash­ing it’s worse. They say we were in the eye of the storm and I believe that!! I was lucky

enough to get to the indoor before it hit and I say — very scary indeed. The noise of the rain was tremen­dous as was the thun­der and light­ning. Glad I wasn’t a rider out in that mess. Some poor Para rid­ers got stuck doing their tests in the storm and got absolutely drenched. Still they car­ried on before orga­niz­ers called it too dan­ger­ous to con­tinue. The advanced freestyle rid­ers couldn’t even hear their music. How those horses worked through it all in one piece amazes me. But a nice but scary end to a hot three days.
I thor­oughly enjoyed myself. It was a nice change to see ALL the place get­ters show up for pre­sen­ta­tion. I know it can be hard some­times but when the spon­sors have such super prizes for up to 8th place (I think), who wouldn’t want to be there for pre­sen­ta­tion!! And the male rid­ers. One class saw nearly all place get­ters being men! A big turnout of the male rid­ers. And good male rid­ers!! Mmmmm, not too sure about that. We women like our dom­i­nance here.
But a huge thank you to Bill and Berni Saun­ders from Cyber­horse for fly­ing me down and accom­mo­dat­ing me. You have a beau­ti­ful pic­turesque home. I was really made to feel like at home so thankyou. Until next time…. Say­onaro and happy riding.