Jose Diacono is well known as the face of the great new product CrossCountry App and is also actively involved in the organisation of the Sydney International 3 Day Event. On a recent trip back to her native UK she spent a couple of days at Burnham Market International Horse Trials and has shared with us her thoughts on the difference between UK and Australian events
Jose and Clayton Fredericks - winner of the Advanced Section D on Waltersdown Don
I recently spent two days in scenic Norfolk at the Burnham Market International Horse Trials. It’s all Olympic fever here in Britain and there were no less than 30 Olympic hopefuls competing from for Britain, Brazil, USA, Ireland, Germany, Holland, France, Japan… I have probably missed a few. It was a really nice touch to have all the flags of the competing nations flying next to the showjumping arena. The event was very professionally run with an excellent commentary that you could hear everywhere.
While much is similar I noticed some differences between Burnham and our Australian events;
British One Day Events really are on one day
In Australia you don’t often get an ODE all in one day. I suspect, due to the challenge of finding enough volunteers for cross country, we usually run all of our cross country on the same day. In Britain an event runs as a series of true one day events i.e. all phases of the PreNovice (BE 100) on Thursday, all the One Star on Friday. Two and three star events run over two days. So not so many horses sleep over and most of the trucks left for the night.
There is a lot of mud
But it doesn’t bother them. British mud is sticky and horses didn’t seem to slip. Organisers pretty much only cancel if it is so bad they cannot get the ambulance out onto the course. To be fair, the mud is not as bad everywhere as in the photo below
It is very cold
Woolly hats replace baseball caps. Take your ski gloves. Green wellies are a must
Lots of food vans
You have to eat to keep warm. Cornish Pasties; pies; Fish, chips and mushy peas. They didn’t have them at Burnham but Hot Roast Pork rolls with stuffing and crackling are the British equivalent of our sausage sandwich. Definitely not to be missed.
You get a good cup of tea
While always have to tell Australians DO NOT PUT THE MILK IN YET, in England it would be heresy to add milk before it was properly brewed. The coffee is improving but they don’t know what a Flat White is.
It is quite gloomy
On Saturday the sun did come out for a while but my iPhone didn’t like the gloom for photos. We take our clear blue skies for granted.
They have huge entries
775 competitors over the 3 days. 110 in 2 star, 220 in BE100, which apart from one very big jump shared with novice/one star, looked much more do-able than our PreNovice courses.
Cross country runs for ever
It was still going at 6.15pm on Friday when I left. There were some quite big gaps while they waited for riders. Mostly you walk the course while others are riding it so you have to be very alert to the fence judges whistles.
Lucinda Fredericks walking back from the cross country finish
Very few riders have any identification on their trucks
To avoid groupies I assume. Ollie Townend was the exception. It makes it quite difficult to find riders – especially as a lot of events have dodgy mobile coverage. Trucks are Lorries in Britain. Horse floats are Horse Boxes.
Everyone wears back numbers in showjumping
This is great for spectators as bridle numbers are so hard to read. I wouldn’t have realized it was Zara Phillips walking past me otherwise!
Not Zara but ex-pat Aussie Sammi McLeod, now based in Gloucestershire warming up Kinpaddy for showjumping
Different class names
They have novice and one star, intermediate and two star and advanced and three star, all separate classes but two star and intermediate cross country for example are almost identical.
Sometimes the best photos are the ones you don’t snap. William Fox Pitt and Pippa Funnell were riding side by side back to the lorry park. By the time I had scrambled for my camera they had gone their separate ways.
All in all, a brilliant event and experience. CrossCountry App users can download the 3 star and BE 100 courses from crosscountryapp.com/courses
