imaufo
09-06-2004, 08:32
Unbridled passions
BEFORE dawn breaks, when the mercury is at its lowest and the urge to stay under the covers is at its strongest, Anne Jones will emerge bleary-eyed from a makeshift bed inside the horse float that she has dragged to a clearing at Peak Crossing, west of Ipswich in southeastern Queensland.
She'll wander over in the dark to give a pat to her seven-year-old gelding, Cavalier, put the coffee on and start thinking about saddling up. By 5.30am, Jones and Cavalier will be at the starting line of a horse endurance event that will not have a winner until about 10 hours later.
http://www.smfarabs.com/photos/stallions/simeon/Simeon-Shai-1.jpg
Jones is a champion rider, but she and Cavalier will face some stiff competition. In the chill winds of pre-dawn Peak Crossing, about 90 other horse fanatics will line up with their helmet lights on in the hope of winning HH the President of the United Arab Emirates Australian Championship, part of this weekend's Endurance Horse Festival.
Among the riders will be the usual mix of country and city folk, old and young, but with an exotic twist – there'll also be an Arab prince or two among the riders.
Endurance riding is the world's fastest-growing horse sport and nowhere has it been embraced more rapidly in the past decade than in the UAE, with the Crown Prince of Dubai and two sons of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, President of the UAE, among the keen competitors. That has been good news for Australian breeders who are rearing and training horses for Arab stables, helping to turn endurance riding in Australia into an industry worth more than $50 million annually.
Riders such as Jones, 52, get a kick out of it as well, with events such as this weekend's festival – expected to attract 300 riders across a range of events – benefitting from the UAE sponsorship.
"I just think it's fantastic," Jones says. "I can't wait, everyone getting together and enjoying their horses, all the different people, it's great."
Forty years ago, endurance riding was all but forgotten in Australia. The days of rider and horse making their way across the countryside, delivering messages and visiting far-flung neighbours, had disappeared with the advent of the car. But after the US rekindled its long-distance horsemanship with the inaugural 160km Tevis Cup in 1955, Australian horseman R.M. Williams wondered why the same couldn't be done here.
By 1966, he proved it could. An old friend and Kimberley cattleman, Tom Quilty, donated pound stg. 1000 towards a gold cup and 26 riders took to the NSW Hawkesbury region around Colo to try to take it home. Now the main event on the endurance calendar and rotated around the states, the Quilty last year attracted 273 competitors. But smaller events are held in some part of the country most weekends during winter, with about 8500 riders involved in the sport.
This weekend's event, in its third year, is a youngster compared with the Quilty, but the rules are much the same. At the heart of any endurance event, according to Peter Toft, a horse breeder and rider, is the need to finish the event with a horse "fit to continue".
"We don't have a sport unless we care for our animals, it's really that simple," he says.
"Endurance riding is about a tremendously strong bonding between you and your horse, and people can come last but finish fit to continue and still feel as successful as the person who won. That makes it a pretty unique sport – seeing your horse look well at the end of the ride, not overused, fresh and [looking as if it] could just go and do the whole job all over again, that's the greatest honour you can have in endurance riding."
And honour is the main reward in being an endurance rider in Australia because there's no money in winning an event. You might get a trophy or a belt buckle, but a decision was made in the 1980s that prize money could detract from the spirit of the sport.
It's different in the UAE. There, prizes can be hefty, with riders – a growing number from Australia – competing for luxury cars and holidays. Much is heard about the eight-year-old, $6 million Dubai Cup in horseracing, but endurance riding has also become a passion in the UAE.
Native horses of the region, Arabians, are the choice for endurance riding – muscular, intelligent and built for long distances. But there's a catch. The deserts of the UAE are not conducive to breeding quality horses.
Enter Australian breeders and trainers.
"There's definitely a buying spree of horses going to the Middle East," says veterinarian Brian Sheahan, in between doing fitness appraisals on several Arabians bound for overseas.
"We've got perfect conditions in Australia for raising quality horses."
Brook Sample and Meg Wade, champion Australian endurance riders, run stables in Queenland and Victoria respectively that work almost exclusively for Dubai's Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. A handful of others are selling widely to the Middle East market.
Most horses fetch about $15,000 to $50,000 in the UAE, says Sheahan, but a few special horses go for six-figure sums, with rumours of one horse selling for $600,000.
Sheahan has travelled the world as an adjudicator of horses' ability to continue in endurance events. Telling descendants of the hordes of Genghis Khan in Mongolia that their horse must be scratched requires a bit of nerve, he says, but the animal comes first.
http://www.uaeequafed.ae/g21ride1.jpg
"You can't let personalities or people's position influence you – but it is interesting when you're in Dubai and you've got the royal family and their entourage and some bodyguards watching," he says.
Exposure to top level world events is growing not just for the veterinarians, trainers and strappers of Australia but also for riders, with a national endurance squad formed last year to train for international competitions.
But Jones, a self-titled galloping grandma, multi-capped rider and a member of the national squad, says the appeal of endurance riding is more about having time for her horse, her country and herself.
"Sometimes, when you have to get up in the middle of the night and it's cold and dark, you wonder: 'What am I doing here?"' says Jones.
"But then when you're on top of one of the red sand hills in the Simpson Desert at sunrise, you just wonder: 'What are the poor people doing?"'
http://www.uaeequafed.ae/g21ride3.jpg
BEFORE dawn breaks, when the mercury is at its lowest and the urge to stay under the covers is at its strongest, Anne Jones will emerge bleary-eyed from a makeshift bed inside the horse float that she has dragged to a clearing at Peak Crossing, west of Ipswich in southeastern Queensland.
She'll wander over in the dark to give a pat to her seven-year-old gelding, Cavalier, put the coffee on and start thinking about saddling up. By 5.30am, Jones and Cavalier will be at the starting line of a horse endurance event that will not have a winner until about 10 hours later.
http://www.smfarabs.com/photos/stallions/simeon/Simeon-Shai-1.jpg
Jones is a champion rider, but she and Cavalier will face some stiff competition. In the chill winds of pre-dawn Peak Crossing, about 90 other horse fanatics will line up with their helmet lights on in the hope of winning HH the President of the United Arab Emirates Australian Championship, part of this weekend's Endurance Horse Festival.
Among the riders will be the usual mix of country and city folk, old and young, but with an exotic twist – there'll also be an Arab prince or two among the riders.
Endurance riding is the world's fastest-growing horse sport and nowhere has it been embraced more rapidly in the past decade than in the UAE, with the Crown Prince of Dubai and two sons of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, President of the UAE, among the keen competitors. That has been good news for Australian breeders who are rearing and training horses for Arab stables, helping to turn endurance riding in Australia into an industry worth more than $50 million annually.
Riders such as Jones, 52, get a kick out of it as well, with events such as this weekend's festival – expected to attract 300 riders across a range of events – benefitting from the UAE sponsorship.
"I just think it's fantastic," Jones says. "I can't wait, everyone getting together and enjoying their horses, all the different people, it's great."
Forty years ago, endurance riding was all but forgotten in Australia. The days of rider and horse making their way across the countryside, delivering messages and visiting far-flung neighbours, had disappeared with the advent of the car. But after the US rekindled its long-distance horsemanship with the inaugural 160km Tevis Cup in 1955, Australian horseman R.M. Williams wondered why the same couldn't be done here.
By 1966, he proved it could. An old friend and Kimberley cattleman, Tom Quilty, donated pound stg. 1000 towards a gold cup and 26 riders took to the NSW Hawkesbury region around Colo to try to take it home. Now the main event on the endurance calendar and rotated around the states, the Quilty last year attracted 273 competitors. But smaller events are held in some part of the country most weekends during winter, with about 8500 riders involved in the sport.
This weekend's event, in its third year, is a youngster compared with the Quilty, but the rules are much the same. At the heart of any endurance event, according to Peter Toft, a horse breeder and rider, is the need to finish the event with a horse "fit to continue".
"We don't have a sport unless we care for our animals, it's really that simple," he says.
"Endurance riding is about a tremendously strong bonding between you and your horse, and people can come last but finish fit to continue and still feel as successful as the person who won. That makes it a pretty unique sport – seeing your horse look well at the end of the ride, not overused, fresh and [looking as if it] could just go and do the whole job all over again, that's the greatest honour you can have in endurance riding."
And honour is the main reward in being an endurance rider in Australia because there's no money in winning an event. You might get a trophy or a belt buckle, but a decision was made in the 1980s that prize money could detract from the spirit of the sport.
It's different in the UAE. There, prizes can be hefty, with riders – a growing number from Australia – competing for luxury cars and holidays. Much is heard about the eight-year-old, $6 million Dubai Cup in horseracing, but endurance riding has also become a passion in the UAE.
Native horses of the region, Arabians, are the choice for endurance riding – muscular, intelligent and built for long distances. But there's a catch. The deserts of the UAE are not conducive to breeding quality horses.
Enter Australian breeders and trainers.
"There's definitely a buying spree of horses going to the Middle East," says veterinarian Brian Sheahan, in between doing fitness appraisals on several Arabians bound for overseas.
"We've got perfect conditions in Australia for raising quality horses."
Brook Sample and Meg Wade, champion Australian endurance riders, run stables in Queenland and Victoria respectively that work almost exclusively for Dubai's Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. A handful of others are selling widely to the Middle East market.
Most horses fetch about $15,000 to $50,000 in the UAE, says Sheahan, but a few special horses go for six-figure sums, with rumours of one horse selling for $600,000.
Sheahan has travelled the world as an adjudicator of horses' ability to continue in endurance events. Telling descendants of the hordes of Genghis Khan in Mongolia that their horse must be scratched requires a bit of nerve, he says, but the animal comes first.
http://www.uaeequafed.ae/g21ride1.jpg
"You can't let personalities or people's position influence you – but it is interesting when you're in Dubai and you've got the royal family and their entourage and some bodyguards watching," he says.
Exposure to top level world events is growing not just for the veterinarians, trainers and strappers of Australia but also for riders, with a national endurance squad formed last year to train for international competitions.
But Jones, a self-titled galloping grandma, multi-capped rider and a member of the national squad, says the appeal of endurance riding is more about having time for her horse, her country and herself.
"Sometimes, when you have to get up in the middle of the night and it's cold and dark, you wonder: 'What am I doing here?"' says Jones.
"But then when you're on top of one of the red sand hills in the Simpson Desert at sunrise, you just wonder: 'What are the poor people doing?"'
http://www.uaeequafed.ae/g21ride3.jpg