MARCH DIARY

During March the cross country course took its final shape, with all of the fences completed in time for the course inspection by Steward Nicky Salmon and Technical Adviser Eric Winter on 24th March. Luckily they were well satisfied so all the portables can now be fixed down. Although the grass is hardly growing the track of the course has been mown and rolled and this preparation will continue throughout April.

At the end of the month Site Manager Harry Verney started to bang in the posts for the Show Jumping Arena while our local contractor Andy Godwin has done a fantastic job levelling and upgrading the hard track that will be used for the horsebox entrance. This track has been in existence for years, leading to the hangar and the grass airstrip  that is used by quite a few visitors during the Three Day Event, but needed upgrading to take horseboxes in wet weather. The airstrip runs alongside (but safely separated from!) the Grassroots Site.

The approval of the course enabled James Willis to do a proper measurement of its length which has come out just 20 metres short of the prediction he made when laying it out last autumn – not bad! At 2980m it will be much the longest course any of the competitors will have tackled and indeed it has more jumping efforts than a ‘normal’ BE90 or BE100 track, as befits a Championship. Hopefully the horses will be fit, but at least Badminton is (unfortunately for the CCI course designer!) largely flat – there is one short sharp hill next to the Staircase and then a long gentle pull up to The Quarry at the end of the course. For those who know Badminton, the plan of the course which is or soon will be on the website will be pretty clear, but for newcomers it will probably mean nothing at all!

Entries opened on 25th March and we are waiting with bated breath to see how many we have got when they close on 8th April. We obviously want everyone who qualified to be able to come but in truth if they all do it will result in more runners than we really want – we of course will accept everyone but it could mean very long days, especially for the dressage judges! Also we need to finish cross country  by 4.00 pm in order to have the prizegiving in the Main Arena at 5.00.

Mitsubishi Motors have generously confirmed that they will host a reception and hog roast for all the Grassroots riders and officials on the Thursday evening (by invitation only!!), while Chris Shaw of British Eventing has put together an excellent seminar to be held on the Thursday for BE officials, trainers and course designers/builders – also using the Mitsubishi Hospitality facilities. At Badminton we are very keen that the Championships fulfil an education and training role as well as being fun for the competitors.

We have been delighted by the response of sponsors – who are all listed on the home page of the website. Jane Tuckwell is now putting the Programme together, sorting out the adverts, the pages for the list of runners, map, officials and so on – it may not seem much but these things are quite a jigsaw puzzle – though not too huge compared to her parallel task of the main event programme of over 100 pages!

Just four weeks to go now! We are all quite nervous as to how it will go and how the two events will meld together, but we do know that all concerned are hugely looking forward to these Championships.

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