Heath,
on Olympic selection:
The
Australian selectors told all of us in contention for the Australian
Olympic team that we would receive a phone call on 1st July re whether we
would be on the team. These phone calls were to be made in reserve order.
My guestimate was that I’d receive a phone call
at about 2.30pm on Monday afternoon, so come 3 o’clock my phone just
wouldn’t stop with people inquiring if I was on the team or not. The phone
calls became so frantic that my phone had to be plugged to the wall as the
battery wouldn’t hold up! If people called, I had to tell them to get off
the phone, in case they were blocking my important phone call! 4 o’clock
came, 5 o’clock, 6 o’clock, and would you believe… that it wasn’t until
9.30 pm that I finally received the phone call from the selectors! I felt
that this was clear sign that I was not to be included again... yet again, and that those who had drawn the short straw to
inform me had to resort to alcohol and had stalled in calling me because
they knew that I was not going to take the news very well.
I guess
I’m fairly well prepared for being told I’m not on the team, and I have a
prepared procedure where I tell the people informing me how stupid they
are, basically embarrass everyone around me, including myself, make the
informers miserable, sulk for a week and then reappear as if nothing had
happened and get on with life. Life, as in training for
the NEXT Olympics.
Well
this time, the phone call was initiated by Brett Mace, the Australian High
Performance manager and Joanne Fowler, the chairperson of the dressage
selectors. They started off by saying that they were ringing every rider,
and of course I cut them off and said, “yes, yes - just tell me!”. To which they told me they needed to go through the
whole process, and to which I replied, “I just need to be told yes, or no”.
I could
hear Brett take a deep breath, and I knew he was about to tell me my
services were not needed.
When,
instead, he told me that yes, I was on the team, I was left almost
speechless. Quite frankly I didn’t have any preformatted ideas on just how
I was hoping to handle that one, and so I just blundered out a couple of
sentences like, “Oh, thankyou.” followed by
extended silences. Pretty dumb and clumsy actually.
There
you go, and I have to say I’m still tingling with relief and exhilaration!
So I’m
dictating this very quickly to Sharnika, being
Wednesday 16th, and I fly out tomorrow Thursday 17th. I’ve been at home
these past two and a half weeks since Rotterdam,
working as hard as I can and trying to keep my finances above the red line.
The
horses, Greenoaks Dundee and Rozzie’s
Donna Carrera, go into quarantine on the 17th at Aachen, where perhaps
the biggest show in the world is held. In Quarantine will be most of the
European based Olympic horses, so the next few weeks of training will be
amazing amongst all of those riders and horses. On July 30th, the horses
and riders will be trucked to Amsterdam and
flown to Hong Kong. The Eventers are the first to compete, starting August 8th,
and I think it’s probably the best Australian Olympic team we’ve ever had.
On paper this should easily be the team to win the Gold medal.
Dundee and I will be performing on August 13th in the Grand
Prix, and that will be the entire focus of my life for the next 5 weeks.
Certainly there we’ll be going for a personal best and if Hayley and Kristy
can also put in PBs, then the Australian score
will make for very interesting reading.
The
rest of the world has every right to be quite nervous about the Aussies in
the dressage results in the not too distant future. And I’m very proud to
be a part of these history-making moments!
Heath,
on Auction of the Stars:
Toowoomba,
6th July 2008, saw Auction of the Stars conduct its first masterclass and auction at this location. The venue at
the showgrounds actually turned out to be highly
suitable, with the grandstand looking down into the roundyard
where the foals were shown off, and also into the arena where the stallions
were ridden in the masterclass. Some 500 people
attended and, without any of us becoming rich, we were very pleased with
the auction. Certainly some of the vendors achieved prices that were much
lower than they would have liked but I would have to say thankyou to those people for meeting the market and
making a serious contribution to the auction.
The
highest price was $14500 paid by a Western Australian bidder over the phone
for the foal named Royal Jive, by Regardez Moi out of a Jive Magic mare. This cross has only just
started to appear on the Australian scene and certainly all of the horses
with these bloodlines were bid on by numerous parties and all were sold.
There were also a couple of very beautiful Metallic colts, which were also
in high demand.
We were
very pleased to have some Overseas bidders this
year. We would like to continue to encourage these people to be involved
with our auctions, and our horses here in Australia.
Our
next auction is a ridden auction, to be held at the Newcastle Equestrian
Centre in Heatherbrae, near Raymond Terrace NSW
on September 27-28. (Sharnika’s note:
Oops, I need to update the change of venue on the AOS website and
nomination forms!) This is actually making me very nervous, because for
much of the lead-up time I will be at the Olympics and so most of the
cataloguing and lead up work will be left to my staff and to Sharnika Blacker.
If any
of you have a horse, that you feel you would like to enter into this
auction, you need to contact AOS through Sharnika
(email sharnikabl@megalink.com.au or
call 0400 905 107). Our ridden auctions traditionally are great fun, with trialling happening on the Saturday prior to the
auction on the Sunday. Saturday night is a gathering of vendors and any clients trialling the horses,
featuring a Stallion display, and a BBQ which is free to everybody. Hoping to see many of you there, Heath.
