Grassroots Diary December 2009

The preparations for our new venture, the Mitsubishi Motors Grassroots Championships, are in full flow. Despite sometimes thinking we were mad to take this on, the positive response from riders and owners and indeed from all our helpers has been so great that we are really excited about the event.

The best thing we did in the autumn was to persuade Ollie Bush to help us part time as our Grassroots coordinator. Ollie has vast experience behind the scenes at events, including Gatcombe Park ever since it started and before that Tetbury and Dauntsey. She is responsible for all the liaison with competitors, officials and volunteers and will be the ‘Organiser’ on the day.                                                                                       Although we had a reasonable idea of the general layout when we agreed to take on the Grassroots, we have now had to plan the detail. For anyone familiar with Badminton, the main centre of the event will be on ‘The Slaits’ a huge field across the road and next to the airstrip, which years ago was the site of the steeplechase course for the long format Three Day Event. This will house stables, lorry parking, dressage warm up and arenas, showjumping and the ‘Secretary’s tent’, while the cross country course will be on the main event side of the road, starting near Huntsmans Close and running past the House, to the Lake, the Beaufort staircase, Little Badminton and back to finish near the Quarry.

James Willis has laid out the track of the course, planned the fence sites and designed most of the fences. The whole layout and James’s track were checked out by the BE Steward Nicky Salmon and the BE Technical Adviser Eric Winter in early November – both of them know Badminton well and so can help us fit the Grassroots into the overall structure.

We of course know who the possible competitors will be, as they all qualified at regional finals in the autumn. We have been rather concerned at the total number of qualifiers and have had to do some hasty provisional timetables to make sure we can fit everyone in! All organisers assume that there will be a drop out for whatever reason but if there is not a reasonable reduction in numbers there will be some very early dressage times! One of the timetabling difficulties is that we want to finish the competition in time to get the results out and then have a mounted prizegiving in the Three Day Event Main Arena immediately after the last horse does his dressage test on the first dressage day, Friday – there should be quite an atmosphere!

We circularised all the qualifiers to ask their opinion about onsite stabling and there was a huge majority in favour, even though it will be expensive. We will be using the most modern ‘Barn’ stables from Woodhouse, which are the ultimate in temporary stabling and of course we will be providing showers and loos. Perhaps the greatest ‘perk’ is that competitors will be allowed to stay on in the stables during the Three Day Event, exercise their horses on the Badminton estate (though not in the main park!) and will have tickets for the Three Day Event itself.

BE have now finalised the dressage tests to be used for the Championships – both in 60m arenas) – these will be on our website just as soon as we have full copies available – so riders can start practicing during the winter.

We are now just finalising our senior officials for the event, so by next month we should be able to announce the dressage judges and other key positions.

Finally, Mitsubishi Motors is generously planning some sort of reception on the Thursday evening and they will also host some seminars aimed at grassroots coaches, course designers and so on, as we want this Championships to be a real boost to the development of these levels of the sport as well as an occasion in its own right.