More Thought Needed Before Heading Back to the Arena for Kiwi Paralympic Dressage Riders

New Zealand Paralympic dressage riders have given themselves a pass mark as they wrapped up their London 2012 campaigns, but admit there may have to be a serious rethink on how they get to Rio in four years time.

Both riders today indicated their intentions to compete in Brazil and feel their experiences in the English capital will lead to better results the next time around.

The costs involved getting debutants Anthea Gunner and Rachel Stock to the Games is no secret, with their bill for transporting and quarantining their horses ballooning well above one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. But in order to compete here that’s the cold hard reality.

Canterbury’s Gunner is even considering whether to sell her horse, known in the stables as Mask, and by her own admission, upgrade to one more to the judges liking and with the ability to get her to the next level. “If you want to win a medal you need to be on some pretty fancy looking horse power, but you also need to have the temperament to be able to handle these sorts of places. It’s going to be a hard road to find the perfect horse and Mask’s been the perfect horse to this point, but whether he’s going to be the right horse to continue with who knows."

“You just can’t afford to spend sixty thousand on transporting a horse back and forth for a season,” Gunner said when explaining her movements over the next 4 year cycle.
 
That horse may even find itself based in the heart of dressage country, Europe, meaning the 30 year old would commute to and from New Zealand and compete against top international competition on a more consistent basis. But even that radical move has hefty costs associated with it.

The other option is to get more international calibre judges to adjudicate in New Zealand, therefore exposing them to Kiwi riders, and Kiwi riders to them. This seems like a lot more of a level headed approach to an issue that needs addressing long before the next round of qualification starts.

Both combinations have been squeezed harder than most by the judges at Greenwich Park. More often than not three judges marked the Kiwi riders favourably, while the remaining two offered up lower marks than believed to be fair. From one side to the other both Gunner and Stock’s tests found the two sides 5 marks apart. “I know he [Huntingdale Incognito] was better each day, if they’re going to mark everyone low then you don’t feel quite so bad, because their starting point is obviously lower, but sometimes it just doesn’t make sense," admitted a frustrated Gunner.

At age 42 Waikato’s Stock wants to follow the lead of Mark Todd and Andrew Nicholson and compete into her 50’s and beyond, and for good reason. She’s lucky enough to have two horses capable of getting her further up the podium.  And the key to that is more international exposure.

Stock’s final test also highlighted the gap between European based athletes and the rest of the world, with her, one combination from Argentina and one from Israel just 3 out of 12 competitors to hail from outside of the UK or Europe.

Stock finished 9th with her final score of 66.85 made up of the five judges seeing her ride 67.250, 69.500, 70.000, 62.750, 64.750. Gunner finished 17th yesterday with a final score of 62.75.