Horse of the Year - SUNDAY RESULTS

This year’s Land Rover Horse of the Year show has produced some spectacular competitions throughout the six days but the final jump off for the Olympic Cup has to go down as one of the best.

Three very talented women who have been in fine form all show and all season featured in the final jump-off round but it was Te Awamutu’s Emily Hayward and her 9-year-old Australian thoroughbred Belischi HM who triumphed.

Tegan Fitzsimon was probably the hot favourite on the hard-to-beat 8-year-old Windermere Cappuccino and they jumped practically foot perfect in the first two rounds. They were first to jump-off and Tegan certainly set the competition up with another perfectly jumped round in what looked like a useful time. The pressure was therefore on the next competitor, local favourite Melody Matheson and 9-year-old Cortaflex Graffiti MH.

Melody delivered, cutting the corners, gunning it to the last fence, and cleared everything, with a time 1.5 seconds faster than Tegan but there was one more competitor to come.

Emily and Belischi HM had been a bit lucky over a couple of fences in the first two rounds, with the horse showing its inexperience, but he was on fire when it counted and they flew around the course half a second faster than Melody who therefore had to settle for second and Tegan third.

“He has a big stride,” said Emily afterwards about the horse she has owned since 2016. “I knew that if I keep him going, he is a lot faster than other horses.” When she first bought the horse out from Australia, plenty of people questioned ‘why the hell would you buy a gangly horse like that?” Emily said that it was “quite” satisfying to have won and proved her point.

Emily also won the Young Rider of the Year earlier in the show as well as last year on Yandoo Lady Gold. She had also previously won the Junior and Pony Show Hunter Horse of the Year titles, as well as the Aspiring Rider title a number of times. This was the fourth time jumping in the Olympic Cup so she was delighted to have won the top prize now as well.

“I was up against two of the best horses in the country so there was no point mucking around, I just wanted to give it a good go.”

Dressage Horse of the Year
Wendi Williamson and Don Amour MH have won their first Dressage Horse of the Year today in Hastings.

Riding her New Zealand bred 11-year-old Hanoverian, the pair had to contend with a technical hitch in the Freestyle to Music which resulted in her music not playing for about two minutes. She still scored 74.45%. “It is very difficult to ride a musical without music,” she laughed. “That’s obvious but you do ride to the rhythm in the music and it does lift your performance.”

Wendi was also very impressed by the number of people who flocked to see the final competition. “There was no standing room, the place was packed and that makes it very exciting for us. My horse is usually very spooky, but he was really good, he coped really well.”

The next major competition for the pair is the Sydney CDI in May and then she will continue light training throughout the winter, to keep building the horse up.

Junior Rider of the Year

Jessica Collinson made a great decision when she purchased Ngahiwi Cruise just four months ago. The new combination took out the Fiber Fresh Feeds Junior Rider of the Year title today at the Land Rover Horse of the Year show.

“I am speechless,” she said afterwards, finding it hard to sink in that with having the only two clear rounds, she was the clear winner. Ngahiwi Cruise has won this class in 2016 with his previous rider, Steffi Whittaker, from Canterbury.

This year there were eight young riders called back to jump-off, six of them having recorded clear rounds in the first round, and two having four faults. Jessica rode in the jump-off in the pole position of last to go, having had the fastest clear round in the first round. She therefore knew what she had to do to win – go clear. All the other combinations were sitting on four faults by the time she came into the arena.

Jessica decided to take the risk and go for safety. The strategy was a zero or hero one, but it paid off as the pair jumped a beautiful clear and were therefore deserving on their win.

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