How Heidi Hewitson’s dream of riding in an event at SIEC became a character test.
As told to Sean Woodland. Pictures by Andrea O’Meara
Competing in the midweek horse trials at the Sydney International Equestrian Centre (SIEC) is at the forefront of my mind. I bid students farewell, smile at the prospect of not seeing them again for two weeks and drive home, ecstatic at being able to devote the first part of the holidays to my lifelong passion.
By the time I arrive home my throat feels as if a firecracker had been detonated in it. ‘It will pass,’ I tell myself, ‘Surely the world wouldn’t be so cruel as to prevent a horse lover from realising her dream of riding at the Sydney Olympic venue. A Lemsip and a good night’s sleep will rectify these unwelcome bacterial advances.’
It’s Saturday morning, my head is so heavy I can’t lift it from the pillow. Or perhaps my head is stuck to the pillow, so profusely did I sweat overnight. The first day of my long awaited holiday is spent with a box of tissues as company. I muster the energy for a small trail ride in the afternoon. By the time I finish feeding the horses I possess barely enough energy to fall back into bed.
Sunday, I wake and am able to move. Unfortunately, the movement is rapid and borne from an urgent need to get to the bathroom, not a desire to get out and enjoy my day.
At least my commitment is solid. Nothing, least of all a rotten little flu will prevent me from competing at Horsley Park. Again, I raise the energy for a trail ride. A longer one. The horses are fed and I still have enough energy to check the draw for the SIEC event. Something or someone is playing a very bad joke on me. My cheque has been cashed, yet my name does not appear on the draw. At first I think the woman on the other end of the phone is mimicking my nasally voice. Is my sick tone so bizarre she thinks I’m a prank caller?
If only they could schedule as competently as their staff can mimic.
My frustration subsides when I realise she too is suffering from thedreaded lurgy. The woman is sympathetic and reinstates me in place of a late scratching. The second obstacle to my participation has been overcome.
Prior engagements mean I can’t ride on this rainy Monday morning. At any rate, Clyde, my horse has a small bleeding scratch on his right eye. I make a mental note to bathe his eye before our afternoon ride.
When I next see Clyde’s festering eye, no mental note is required. It is puffed up like a sea anemone at low tide. I decide that if the eye gets any worse, it will require draining, and Clyde will need antibiotics more than he does a trip to Sydney and a run around a cross-country course.
It is now that I begin to contemplate whether the three warning signs – my illness, event entry, Clyde’s eye – is the universe’s way of trying to tell me something. Should I cancel rather than risk further disaster? I decide I will sleep on it and make a responsible decision in the morning. If I, or the horse, are still sick, I will accept my fate and not go. Decision time. Clyde’s eye has improved. My cold is okay, save for a cough that sounds like a barking seal. A couple of nights sleeping in a freezing float will be just the tonic for a complete recovery. If the truth were known I wouldn’t turn up to my own wedding feeling as I do, but this is horse business. And horse business is horse business.
The drive to Sydney from my south coast home is faster than usual. It takes only 3.5 hours instead of the usual 4. This means that I and my slow moving vehicle have significantly less interaction with fellow motorists and their extended middle fingers than usual.
We arrive at the same time as friends and set up camp together. Fortuitously our horses are stabled together. I am light-headed with joy (or fever) as I realise my decision to come was the right one. A reward for remaining positive when confronted with a relentless procession of obstacles.
Clyde and I go for a ride. It is dreadful. A bad time to change the horse’s bit. We bicker (as pre-competition tension often ensures) for the entire ride and I momentarily ponder my life choices; working with recalcitrant adolescents during the day and recalcitrant equines the rest of the time. He’s forgotten where to put his head, I can’t pinpoint how much contact he will accept and unbelievably, I can’t even keep him cantering in a circle – something even a Year 9 student will do if you hold a whip to them. Our spat is public and humiliating. I concede defeat and return to treat him to a wash of which he is un-deserving.
Returning to camp I notice that someone has parked within a metre of my float. It would have been hard not to notice. Great, a space invader! The onset of a twitch develops in the corner of my eye when I then realise that I have forgotten to bring my clothes and toiletries. Clyde must forgo his wash. Without a change of clothes I cannot risk getting wet and sleeping in a freezing float. Though, the way things have gone, waking up from a cryogenically induced sleep next century has some attraction. Now I’m in a real flap. I take three deep breaths. These do nothing for my flap but they do reinstate the light-headedness.
Before bed I set my alarm clock for 7.00am. So fearful am I of the cold, I put the oil heater on high, sleep in the only clothes I have and wrap myself up like Tutenkamen in two double doonas. I lay mummified on a narrow stretcher. The night’s sleep could best be described as a fitful, feverish, watch the clock type of sleep.
The alarms awful drone sounds like my dehydrated head feels. I drink enough water to make certain I will have more nervous trips to the toilet than normal. I look at my watch. Shit, my trusty watch says 8.15 am when it should say 7.15 am. My meticulous itinerary is in disarray. I must have slept in. I never sleep in. Breakfast can wait until lunchtime. For Clyde too. I wash him with the speed of a traffic light window washer. His coat, normally grey but now stained brown by the dam he rolls in, really needs more attention. I plait his hair faster than fishing line gets tangled. There is no time to pull his mane properly, so I snip the long ends of the plait. I look at the outcome with the deluded pride of a mother who has just cut her child’s hair. Badly.
Over the loudspeaker I hear, ‘Reminder to all riders – dressage will commence promptly at 8.30am.’ My watch says 9.30am. Why make an announcement an hour after the start? I am in no mood for cruel jokes. I ask someone the time. It is 8.30 am. Overnight, pressed hard against an immovable and mummified body my watch changed itself to daylight saving time. I make a mental note to throw the watch from The Gap next time I am in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
The two and a half hours I now have before dressage succeed in providing me with more time to panic than I need.
Dressage is Clyde’s worst phase. Starving ten minutes ago, my stomach is now full. With butterflies.
Hoping to elicit a behavioural improvement I change the bit back and go to practice. About fifty other riders have the same idea. I move to a smaller arena with only five other riders. Thank goodness, Clyde and I reach a compromise as to where he should hold his head.
We complete a satisfactory dressage test and I begin to think that my week from hell could culminate in a place finish. Next is showjumping. Then I can relax until tomorrow.
At the showjumping arena I check the rider order and walk the course. It is on the big side, but flows nicely. I saddle up, practice jumps and start on cross-rail. Gusting winds vibrate the bunting. Clyde does not approve and he goes off like a German jazz band, throwing himself sideways. To me, courage is just a word in the dictionary and I dismount with speed. Clyde kicks, paws and continues his crab impersonation. I think of lawn bowls or curling up in the foetal position and sucking my thumb. It is best Clyde and I have some space from one another. My girlfriend holds on to him. It only takes thirty minutes for her to subdue him. Finally, with one rail down, we jump a reasonable course. Now I can relax till tomorrow.
My ever-reliable girlfriend – who I currently like so much more than my watch or horse – and I relax and talk horses. We have an outing to buy me a change of underwear and a toothbrush. As I scrub at my teeth I consider that Clyde’s belligerence may have been linked to the smell of my breath. I decide against an encore of the previous evening’s Tutenkamen act and I sleep like a baby.
The cross-country doesn’t start until 12.50 so I don’t care if my watch tries to mess with my head again. Now that it knows it’s headed for The Gap it is behaving perfectly. We walk the cross-country course, and perhaps after smelling my fresher breath Clyde seems primed for performance. The wind is so strong my eyes water. Though on the positive side, the gale has pulled the skin on my face back so tightly I look ten years younger. My nose runs profusely. It feels as if a snail has wondered aimlessly across my face. For a fear of being blown to Bondi by the cyclonic westerly I hold on to the reins. The result is a white set of knuckles.
Only two jumps worry me. The massive brush and the arrow head (the types of which I have never jumped in thirty years of riding). The starting box is also cause for concern. The flapping plastic ribbon might not gel with Clyde’s wind-related equilibrium issue. No worries with the start. I even manage to start my out-of-favour stopwatch. Riding into the wind is awful. It is particularly bad riding down the dips as the horse lugs badly. Here comes the brush jump. Clyde hesitates then jumps. Yippee. If he didn’t refuse the barrel jump I may have had cause for a double yippee. Clyde never refuses. I gather he wants to continue with the wind. We turn, trot over the barrels and ride through water. Now comes the arrow head. Easy. Time to relax and enjoy the rest of the ride. What could possibly go wrong now?
Clyde lugs badly and fights me to the next jump. Usually it is I who has a problem with Clyde’s wind. Weird that he has developed a serious problem with nature’s wind. I check my watch, I am going well. I will have lost a little time, but there are only two jumps to go. Jump twenty-one is a breeze. Uh-oh, where on earth is my last jump? I can’t see it or my number. Why not? Oh, there it is. Upside down and facing the other direction. How silly of me. If only I’d been riding upside down and had approached from the other way I would have been able to see the number easily. I do a quick turn, clear the jump and complete the course.
A rider behind me says she will back me up if I complain to the jumps’ judges. Complaining hasn’t entered my mind. I am thinking more of manual strangulation.
The technical delegate is unsympathetic.
‘You walked the course didn’t you?’ he states rather than asks.
‘Yes,’ I answer meekly, surprised at how easily I adopt the role of admonished child.
‘Then you knew which jump to jump didn’t you?’ he tells me.
‘Well yes, but aren’t the jumps supposed to be clearly marked?’ I ask, dearly wanting to say, ‘Do you place the numbers upside down often or just to see how certain competitors react to pressure?’
‘Yes, but you walked the course didn’t you?’ he repeats.
‘Well yes ………..’
‘Yes, but you walked the course didn’t you?’
I realise how well suited the judge is to holding an inflexible bureaucratic position and give up.
I wonder whether the rules of eventing contain a mitigating circumstances clause. One where I might be able to proffer my illness, Clyde’s sore eye, registration problems, failing to bring a toothbrush, my horse’s sudden development of a wind-assisted equilibrium issue, or me being on the verge of a nervous breakdown in an effort to evoke some compassion. Instead, I decide that blubbering is a better idea.
Time to go home. I drive and begin to contemplate my 14 from 29 finish. The refusal and the missed jump overwhelm my thoughts. Why couldn’t I have gone over the jumps as capably as I can the thoughts in my head? Why did the horse refuse? Why couldn’t I remember the last jump? Who put the number upside down? Why wasn’t the jumps judge a parking inspector? After churning over these questions more than fifty times it becomes apparent that I am no closer to producing an answer. Particularly an answer I want to hear. So busy am I practising the powers of negative thinking and reliving the disaster of my cross-country performance that I miss the turnoff to take me home.
Fortunately, this mishap only provides me with an additional hour to expand on my self-torture techniques. The road is slow, downhill and narrow. Several motorists pass and feel compelled to show me their extended middle fingers.
I tell myself that things could have been worse. But, I can’t think how.
I run out of petrol. Now I know how.
And strangely, as I sit, shivering while waiting for the NRMA, I begin to plan for the next event at Berrima.
