Grassroots Janury Diary 2010

Preparations are still very much on course for the Grassroots Championships, though some aspects are proving to be more time and effort consuming than perhaps we had expected!

The course building has gone very well, with virtually all the ‘permanent’ jumps completed, or at least with posts in the ground and rails in place. The ‘pinning’ of the frangible fences is always done at the end and the portables won’t go out until March or even early April. The Willis Bros are building a lot of new portables, some of which will stay at Badminton but others will go into their stock for hire and use at other events during the year. 

We are also very fortunate to have been given the use of many fences from Shipton Moyne Horse Trials, which is of course organised by Jane and Philip Tuckwell on their land about 7 miles from Badminton – Jane being the Badminton Assistant Director, who has been in the Badminton office for over 30 years. 

Virtually all of the officials are now in place, with a lot of names new to Badminton as well as some of our tried and tested enthusiasts. All are involved in other events during the year, mostly locally and indeed the local communities are showing their valued and continued support for Badminton in its various guises. We were nearly overwhelmed by the number of volunteers and we and the sport as a whole are incredibly lucky to have such support. We hope to announce our dressage judges very soon – we are just waiting for one reply – and we have decided to have two judges for each class rather than just the one formally required, as it seems appropriate for a Championship. Our competitors when they hear who is judging will certainly know that they have got the very best in the land!

We had a very good meeting with our Public Address contractor (Nick Chubb of ShowHire) to go through all the extra communications needed – we wont need any extra radios as we have plenty that are normally only used on the International Event cross country day, but there are phone lines, loudspeakers for stables and show jumping and so on. Nick also appreciated that we are going to have to be careful with the cross country commentary to ensure that it does not disturb the International horses warming up for their dressage! We may have to turn Justin Llewellyn, Giles Rowsell, Mike Tucker and Tim Farmer down to low volume – if such a thing is possible!

We have also been working out the signage needed to get the Grassroots competitors and supporters to the right place. We will be sending route maps out to all competitors but it will still probably be confusing with the hundreds of AA and other signs to the main event.

Our ‘groundsman’ Bill Major has been keeping an eye on the Grassroots arenas – checking to see if the sheep have removed the pegs marking the areas that were mown in the autumn so that he goes in the right place when he starts mowing, rolling and harrowing again. Bill has been hugely instrumental in implementing the ground improvements to the international course and arenas and is determined to see that the grassroots is as good as it can be. Bill retired from running a dairy herd on the Badminton Farms more years ago than he likes to be reminded and has made a new career for himself driving our tractor and mowers.