Now I'm on a end of year 'working holiday' reprieve in the USA, I have made the time to update you on my equestrian happenings in the last half of 2007.

Following closely on a successful end to my Autumn season at the Melbourne International Horse Trials, I reloaded my truck with my showjumping mare, "Koyuna Sun Set" and young eventers, "Koyuna Sun Storm" and "Lord of the Sun" to travel up to Sydney to stay at Wayne Roycroft's property in Mt White where they would join "Koyuna Sun Magic" ('Fox') who had just come out of Sydney quarantine. This had been a quick change of plan made when we had learned that 'Fox' was to be held in quarantine in Sydney for an extra week due to another horse in their shipment failing a blood test. I didn't feel that it was valid to transport him all the way back to SA to then turn around a few weeks later to travel up to QLD for the Elysian Fields Showjumping Championships. When Wayne agreed to have Fox delivered to his property by Heath Ryan whose horse "Flame" had also done the Kentucky trip with Fox, it wasn't a difficult decision to make to take others horses up to train with Wayne & compete in NSW before heading up to the QLD run of eventing and SJ competitions.

Arriving on June 20, I spent 2 weeks training before competing at the Sydney Eventing mid week Horse Trials at the SIEC venue. "Koyuna Sun Storm" excelled in her first 2* class to finish 2nd behind Stuart Tinney while "Lord of the Sun" had clear cross country and show jumping rounds to finish in the minor placings. The following weekend I competed for the first time at the JK Williams Jumping in the Orchard show which was held on the beautiful property of Lee and Dierdre Hartog who were wonderful,welcoming hosts. "Koyuna Sun Set" ('Leah') really stepped up at this show to prove she is a serious jumper with placngs in both the 1.2m and the 1.35m welcome stakes on Saturday before winning the 1.2m final in an exciting jump-off and jumping a clear first round in her first Grand Prix to finish 6th. I was very excited with these performances and made the plan to stay on in QLD an extra week to jump at the Towoomba World Cup Show and start in my first World Cup Qualifier class which had been a long term goal of mine."Koyuna Sun Storm" was also very competitive, winning the Derby trial on Saturday, placing 5th in the 1.2m final Sunday morning before winning the Agnes Banks Speed Derby that afternoon ahead of Vicki Roycroft's Australian SJ Champion, "Ricardo D."

From the SJ in NSW we travelled up to the Kooralbyn International Horse Trials in QLD where 'Storm' needed a qualifying result in the CIC** to be qualified to compete at the Hong Kong test event as she had been named as a reserve. She duly did this with the only clear cross country and showjumping rounds of the class for  a strong 2nd placing to Shane Rose's "Staford Novalis" which then went on to run 3rd at the Hong Kong test event. "Lord of the Sun" ('Plugger') showed much improvement for a good win in the 40-strong Pre-Novice field and proved ready to upgrade to Novice at his next start. From Kooralbyn, we travelled back to Simone Kann's property where we 'boarded' for the next 3 weeks in between travelling to the Elysian Fields competition venue.

Michael & Kelly King's "Elysian Fields" is an amazing property, looking up on the Tambourine mountain range in the Gold Coast hinterland, boasting acres of polo fields and a beautiful club house overlooking the main polo field where the Gold and Silver classic finals were held. The first day of competition held the 1^st qualifiers for all sections ranging from the Gold at 1.55-1.6m, to the Debutante tour at 1m. I had Fox and Leah in the Silver tour (1.35-1.45m), Storm in the Bronze tour (1.15-1.25m) and Plugger in the Progressive tour (1.05-1.15m) which certainly kept me busy competing in all 3 of the competition rings most days. Leah jumped very well to place 3rd (out of 68!) in the first Silver qualifier but Fox was less than cooperative to have 2 fences down for an unsatisfactory result, especially as the commentator, Gary Wilkinson was announcing him as my best prospect for the Beijing Olympics! Storm excelled against the clock to win the female section of the first Bronze qualifier (the field of 94 was split into a roughly equal male and female section just for fun!) while Plugger was competitive with 2 clear rounds for 11^th in his section of the Progressive tour. The 2nd Silver qualifier was large so I was excited to have Leah clear in the first round and just one down in a tough jump-off to finish 11th but again Fox made hard work of the course for 3 fences down. The course was certainly bigger than eventing showjumping but I wasn't feeling 'in tune' with him at all. Storm finished off her weekend with another strong performance for 2nd place in her 2nd Bronze qualifier and Plugger ran 7th in his 2nd Progressive tour qualifier.

As part of the High Performance Program, I was able to access the new National Show Jumping technical Director, Gilbert Boeckmann for a video critique the next day. He viewed Fox's showjumping round from Kentucky, Dancer and Shine's rounds from Melbourne as well as Fox's and Leah's rounds from the 2nd Silver qualifier the previous day. After the viewing, Gilbert stated that he wasn't surprised I was having rails down with Fox at the moment as the horse was 'coming out of his shape' before the fence and wasn't truly connected between my hand and my leg. He seemed much happier with my training of my younger horses. We then agreed to do some training with Fox during the week. This was quite a traumatic experience as Fox wasn't happy with being asked to canter in a shape to a pole even though after watching Fox warm-up on the flat Gilbert had said "this horse is very good on the flat." Fortunately, both Jamie Coman and Rod Brown were present to watch & help translate etc and both told me "I needed to do this" ie challenge Fox on his view that he was precious and could pretty much do as he pleased! Following my 3rd session with Gilbert, I felt that I was making necessary progress but decided not to compete Fox again at Elysian. Between Gilbert, Jamie and myself we also decided that Fox should do some training with Jamie to reinforce these new training techniques.

Leah jumped very well in a large 3rd Silver qualifier for an unlucky rail in the first round which nonetheless left her 5th after the qualifiers and a starter in the final! Storm and Plugger were again competitive in their 3rd qualifiers for a win and a 4th place to be 1st and 8th after the qualifiers in the Bronze and Progressive tours respectively to go into the finals the following day. The Progressive final was quite a bit larger than the previous
qualifiers but, after having the first 2 fences down, I was pleased with Plugger's efforts to jump the remaining fences clear. Storm excelled in the first round and was jumping exhuberently for most of the 2^nd round...a mistake at the final element of the treble unsettled her though and she lost her form to have the last 2 fences down as well. I was disappointed for her as she had been the stand out horse in her qualifiers but lacked the experience when the fences were raised somewhat for the final. The Silver final was very exciting being held in front of the Polo clubhouse on the maincured main polo field and having the atmosphere boosted by motivational pop songs and grandstands around the arena. Leah was quite excited too becoming a little unrideable in the first part of the course which contributed to a mistake at fence 2, one of the easier fences on the course! We both took a breather then and continued to jump the remainder of the course clear with 1 time fault for being 3 tenths of a second over time. Being run under the new 'winning round' formula, they took back the top 25% into the 2nd round and as there was only one clear round from the 25 competitiors in the first round, we were in the top 8 invited back to jump again. Very exciting but it also meant I had to jump again! Leah was more settled this time in and proceeded to jump carefully clear to finish a creditable 5th behind some very expensive imported horses!

With much confidence from our performances at Elysian, I arrived at Towoomba really looking forward to competing in my first World Cup class. Storm had a win and a 2nd in some classes prior to the World Cup that evening to boost my confidence and Leah had jumped well in the warm-up class the previous day and schooled in the indoor arena the previous night to accustom her to the atmosphere. We had drawn 2nd to go which suited me well as I figured I would have less time to get nervous then. An early rail at the tall vertical at 3A really tuned Leah up and she proceeded to jump the rest of the course clear without touching anything else and I punched the air, really stoked to have acquitted ourselves so well in our first World Cup qualifier. Again with just 5 clears out of 27 in the first round we were invited back to jump again as one of 6 horses with 4 faults. Leah made no mistakes second time around and I fulfilled an ambition to jump a clear round at World cup level! As the only one of the 6 4-faulters to jump clear in the 2nd round, Leah finished in 6th behind the 5 horses who had jumped clear first rounds; 4 of those had jumped clear again while the other had a faster time with 4 faults to finish in 5th. Laurie Lever's "Ashleigh Drossel Dan" won the class in an amazing jump-off where he turned back to these huge fences with only a stride to go. Storm then ran 2nd in the 1.3m Championship and 5th in the Speed Championships to cap off a great show at
Towoomba which had also seen Fox return to better form in some smaller outside classes.
 

After a long drive home to SA, we were back at it with renewed enthusiasm and reviewed training methods that I was keen to implement on all my others horses and students! Dancer and Shine had their first outing after Melbourne at the local Adelaide Hills Dressage Day as did some young ones who were very excited to be out! August 18/19 saw us down at the Mt Gambier Horse Trials where Dancer and Shine had a 3* combined training, Storm a 2* run, Plugger his first 1* and youngster "Glenrose Sun Devil" his first Pre-Novice. I must confess that I found the nice, early-season crosscountry courses a little less challenging than the World Cup showjumping but I was really pleased that all horses produced soft, relaxed dressage tests to lead or be well up in their classes. Dancer show jumped clear to win the combined training, Shinehowever didn't jump as she had cut her hock overnight. Storm, Plugger and Dobby were all clear and reasonably fast cross country and then clear showjumping to win their respective classes. I was very much looking forward to a busy spring season which promised much...then EI outbreak occured and the whole horse industry was struggling to cope with stock standstills, cancelled competitions and resulting major income losses for so many.

Fox, being at Jamie Coman's property near Maitland in NSW which was central to the outbreak regions, was right in the 'thick of it' though remained uninfected as he had recently had vaccinations in February and March prior to travelling to the USA for Kentucky and from the previous June and July prior to his European travel. Travel home to SA in September as planned was never going to happen though! Having now returned Fox home, after much hassling of both SA and NSW DPI officals and a stricly supervised quarantine period at the Monarto Equestrian centre, I am very happy with my decision to leave him with Jamie for training as he is now a much improved horse to ride and train and I am very much looking forward to our 2008 campaign to Beijing, even if it means preparing in the UK safely away from the risk of a future EI outbreak which would jeopardise our chances of being allowed into Hong Kong.

The year ended on a brighter note however with the running of the Lakes & Craters International Horse Trials in Camperdown, Victoria on December 7-9. Storm and Plugger carried on from where they had left off at Mt Gambier with strong wins in the CCI** and CCI* classes respectively, proving themselves to be exciting horses for the future. I was grateful that we were able to conitnue our squad and private training clinics with Wayne Roycroft and Harry Boldt and Di Jenkyn and Jamie Coman respectively as well as my local dressage trainer, Ruth Schneeburger as it has been a difficult time in the past few months. I am definitely looking forward to competing again in 2008 and training with the intensity that will produce the results that I desire!