Junior World Trophy, Hungary 2010 – Louise & Mike Hodgson
Due to unforeseen circumstances we were faced with the possibility that Mike did not have a pony to drive in Hungary.
Having informed our Chef d’quippe of the situation, Sara Howe pulled out all the stops to help us which resulted in Tim and Harriet Bradford offering Mike the opportunity to trial Harriet’s second pony Pip (Harriet had decided to take her other pony Ginga to Hungary but both had been vaccinated).
It was decided that Mike would go to Holker to have a drive of Pip, thanks to Phil and Janet Reeves for giving Mike a lift and providing him with a bed. Wilf Bowman Ripley (team trainer) and Tim watched Mike and were both happy that they were compatible. So having put everything on hold I was now frantically running round to get things organised.
Mike spent 4 days down in Essex with the Bradford’s, driving Pip twice a day under Harriet’s guidance and with three Bradford girls, Mike appeared to make himself quite at home! Many thanks to Natalie for looking after Mike and putting up with his food fads, although it appears Tim also has similar tastes!
The ponies travelled in two lorries to Hungary and we all followed in cars, campervans and lorries. The majority of us stopped at Frankfurt race course with the ponies on the overnight stop. All travelled well on the first day and had a restful night whilst some of us resorted to sleeping under the stars as it was so hot. The second day from Frankfurt to Hungary took fourteen hours, leaving at 4.30am we arrived about 7pm and the ponies about two hours later. The ponies were unloaded and taken to their stables to rest. Unfortunately one pony came of the lorry dehydrated and hourly checks were made through the night to make sure that she was comfortable. Trips were made to McDonalds to ensure everyone was fed before collapsing in our beds.
Monday was a rest day and time was spent setting up camp and walking the ponies in hand to stretch their legs. They were all given the once over by Sara, Anna and Wilf who were generally happy with how they had travelled, we just had a couple of ponies that required more rest but all were fit to compete by the Thursday.
Monday also saw the arrival of the film crew from Horse & Country. They had been with us at Ashfield’s for the last training camp and were in Hungary for the duration to record the progress of our Young Drivers and some more embarrassing moments!!
Having arrived a day early we had time on our hands and some travelled into Budapest on the Tuesday to do a spot of site seeing, others stayed around camp relaxing and a very competitive card school emerged, notably my youngest Rick, Sara, Trish and Anne Walter Symons!
Wednesday morning was the vet inspection. All ponies look fit and healthy and passed with no issues. This was the first time we really started to feel the Hungarians’ obvious intention of winning this competition: disrupted training sessions and broken whips on carriages left a not-so-great feeling in the camp. In the evening we all attended the Opening Ceremony which is always a great spectacle. All the ponies in the arena behaved and those at the back of the England contingency were all kept amused by the German mascot (a Labrador dog) who got progressively more and more bored and came up with numerous tricks to keep him self entertained!
Thursday was the start of the competition and Mike’s 15th birthday!! Mike was on at 8.30am which was brilliant, get it over and done with and then relax. After an early start and some help with getting ready from Tor Bradford (groom extraordinaire), Anna Grayston guided Mike through his warm up. The arena was first class and could not be faulted in any way; with spectators around three sides of the arena it created a great atmosphere. Mike drove a calm and accurate test and given he had only driven the pony a handful of times, put in a great performance. The rest of the day was spent supporting all the other team members (not forgetting the Welsh). Preparations for Nations Night started in earnest in the afternoon: we were serving sausage, mash & onion gravy, eton mess and pimms.
Stories of Nations Night in Austria are still repeated frequently and because of this I was of the booze!! As previously we appeared to clear our table of food very quickly but I kept hearing snippets of conversation referring to Mike, schnapps and Belgian beer, oh no! I finally tracked him down and was pleasantly surprised by his condition and having decided that he probably didn’t want me hanging around I decided to head back to camp with other “oldies”. We were kept amused for the rest of the evening by the comings and goings of others and are hoping that there will be an unedited version of the programme being filmed but only available to those of us who were there!! The highlight of the evening was certainly watching Wilf threatening to throw Mike in the paddling pool, Mike tried some last minute negotiations (promised he would win) but both ended up losing their balance and ended up soaked.
Friday saw the youngest team members drive their dressage tests, again we witnessed unfair play. Ponies were openly driven by their grooms (namely their parents) during the warm up, although this tended to be done away from the main arena. Everyone was under strict orders Friday evening, no alcohol and early to bed.
Saturday was frantic with both FEI and ICKD marathons running side by side, but all our team members put in well driven performances. The only downside was Jack Thorne’s pony picking up an injury and having to withdraw. I found it particularly nerve wracking and hoped I would remember the gates correctly, although I needn’t have worried. Entertainment was laid on in the evening and I was very impressed with the dancing from the Brits!
Cones day was very tense, with Roseanna and Charlie each sitting in first place and Mike in 4th. With less than 1 penalty between him and third we had everything to play for. As we were warming up, word got back that no one was making the time so Mike went in for a double clear. This time he didn’t pull it off, so many times he has but perhaps it was just expecting too much. Mike made the time but paid with balls down but still finished a credible seventh in this phase. Unfortunately both Roseanna and Charlie couldn’t hang on to first place and both dropped down to 3rd. However Roseanna, in the FEI class, was beaten by a spectacular cones round by an Austrian boy who actually beat Mike in Austria to win there, obviously one to watch in the future.
Unfortunately the Hungarians managed to tarnish the closing ceremony by only inviting the top 3 teams back into the arena (in Austria all teams paraded on foot) and word soon spread that they had changed the scoring system so that they won Team Gold. I have yet to see any official team results.
Sunday evening was spent packing and trying to resolve problems with the ponies transport. We eventually made it to bed and set our alarms for 4am!
The journey home was long and mostly uneventful. We left the showground at about 4.30am before the ponies and arrived in Frankfurt at 8.30pm. After setting up tempory camp for the last time, we headed to a local Italian restaurant for our “last supper”. The ponies arrived about 11pm followed very closely by 2 huge transporters with 30 polo ponies! We very quickly put our ponies in the best stables and shuffled vehicles around to accommodate the artics. Put forty five ponies in strange stables where they couldn’t see each other (solid doors and walls) there was no hope of sleep and it was gone 1am before we headed for our beds, with the alarms set for 4am, again!!
We made good time on the last day and arrived in Calais early, we managed to get on an earlier ferry and soon joined the queue for fish & chips! We arrived back in Dover around 5pm and as we had no pony to unload and take home, the thought of our own beds was too great and we decided to push on, arriving home not long before midnight.
The trip was a great experience and a steep learning curve in many ways, both for ourselves, the team trainers, our chef d’quippe and the ICKD. Word is JWT 2012 will be Austria or Denmark and I know all those involved will do there upmost to move things forward and develop further this fantastic competition for our juniors.
Louise