Islamabad Day 3

Peter T on Prince

Today we had a leisurely breakfast and then headed off to the ground

All the horses were ready and tacked up, but Michael had a change of horse onto another speedy pony.

Adrian on "No Name"

Jacky on Funny Boy and Jerry on Cobra

I was also told to get of the lovely Grey Cloud and swap onto something quieter, actually this was a good think as due to his high head carriage you have to lean out to see the pegs!

Michael on "Young Boy"

Tina on "Pompidoo"

The competition began with individual lance, we were pegging on cardboard pegs and the first two rounds were on 6cm pegs, which were then turned sideways for the 3rd, 5th and 6th round.

I wasn't on top form and missed 2 of the 1" pegs, however the two Peters (Kramer and Turland) battled it out for silver and bronze. Michael on a mixture of two ponies snuck off with the gold! We didn't want to overrun the horses so after one equal run off, they decided the winner on the toss of the coin .... however neither has let on who won ... Turland did have quite a big grin though.... TBC

Half section lance followed, Jacky ran with Jerry, Tina ran with Adrian, Peter and Peter and Michael and myself. We swapped from cardboard to date palm pegs, which are much nicer to carry than cardboard.
All horses ran well, Pakistan clinched the gold, with England Eagles in Silver. The German Giants were on level pegging, so a coin was again used and Michael and myself lost the toss to the two Peters for Bronze.

Lunch was at the grounds and we had pizza or chicken and rice, toilet situation is a bit dicey for the ladies, gents appear to wander lake-wards....

So we did research on the horses names, Tina is riding Pompidoo

Peter Turland is on Prince

Adrian failed in his task so we have named his horse "No Name" - to be fair I have tried this horse at Kot Feth Khan and once again I did not have a good name for him!

Rings followed lunch, Cobra the young horse Jerry has been riding wouldn't run alone, so he was swapped onto a new horse and then made to run first! Obviously this worked and he had a full house.
We did one run, and then only the highest scorers ran again.

Jerry - Movember, with his mount Hefty Girl....

I managed a full house, and was on level pegging with Jerry, luck was with me and I managed the same again, the others did well, but I was unbeatable with two full houses.

After this we went to the Islamabad Club to visit the riding centre and inspect the horses and look at the grounds which included a massive outdoor arena. All the horses looked in fantastic condition and the surroundings were beautiful. We saw young children having lessons on horses, I haven't seen a pony in Pakistan, so I think they have to learn on horses.

Back to the hotel for a quick shower before heading out for dinner with our friend Omer Durrani

Dawn with one turtle dove

We had the most amazing dinner with the most wonderful food and also received amazing gifts from our Afghan friend friend Azam Effendi

Relaxing

I can honestly say team moral is very high and we are having the most amazing time !!

Islamabad Day 1 & Day 2

I have been having a nice holiday moving from Oman to Pakistan and enjoying a "break" at Kot Feth Khan. Lots of wonderful things seen and done including mad bull racing, lots of agriculture, and riding within inches of camels and the horses thinking its normal.

I have attached a short video of the maddest sport I have ever seen - Bull racing. Basically you yoke two fast bulls together, stand on a tea tray behind them and use firecrackers to make them run!!

Definitely 10/10 for a bonkers sport.... I'd quite like to have a go.....

On sunday morning we headed out at 5.30am to Islamabad airport to meet the English Team arriving from Heathrow.  They were treated to a VIP reception, bypassing the crowds and enjoying the private lounge with Prince Malik and the Sports Minister of Pakistan.

The team was whisked to the hotel to settle and relax after a red eye flight, the hotel is ideal with wifi, snooker table and fluffy pillows!

Inspecting local teas

After a short nap we headed to grounds to inspect the layout and try the horses. A local competition was running so we got to watch some good desi style and catch up with our friends from previous competitions. 

Raja working his horse

My next task was to sort out the horses, Prince Malik brought 5 for the team and we had to borrow a further 3. However I knew all of Prince Malik's horses, having previously pegged them earlier in the week. 

Stallions are well behaved and grooms tend to their feet! 

Jerry has a beautiful dapple grey, known as "Cobra", who is terribly sweet, but only started pegging this week! I choose Jerry as he is a lovely sympathetic rider and will hopefully give him lots of confidence.

A beautiful black horse turned up and was quite small, so looked ideal for Tina or Jacky, and Tina took him on. He turned out to be very swift and well behaved, Tina will find out his name later! 

Jacky was given Funny Boy, a bay who is straight forward and knows his job, she has been running as a pair with Cobra and Jerry to help them running on the track lined with advertising banners.

Adrian is on another bay of Prince Malik's, despite riding him I have yet to learn his name. He runs well, but can be tricky to mount, the grooms looked quite puzzled when I gave him a leg up! 

Michael got a bay horse, borrowed, so I couldn't help on his background, but he also proved speedy and a nice straight runner - name TBC!

Peter also got a borrowed horse, another bay - I asked Peter for details and the only this he said was "absolutely super", I am pretty sure this is not his name... again name TBC!

Pit (German Peter), was riding a bay of Prince Malik's, when I asked his name his name was "No idea". Today he swapped onto a pony, who was extremely vocal ! 

Dawn our coach / manager / mother / cat herder / judge is now completely official and has been presenting the prizes to the local teams, we hope to see her tomorrow in the newspaper. There is one newspaper called Dawn, so we will keep an eye out for Dawn in Dawn!!

There is one huge problem with being here, its the food, we get offered too much and it is too tasty, breeches are getting rather tight! 

Peter with "bodyguards"

On the first night we went out to see a friend we meet at West Tofts in the UK and hosted us. Unfortunately we had an eventful journey, with a sheared drive shaft on the Islamabad highway. Help was faster than the AA and we were soon transferred to new cars - we saw the truck already repaired today! 

The competition has been delayed by a day as a famous tentpegger unfortunately had a heart attack at the start of a team run at another event and the local teams wanted to attend the funeral, so we cleared the day to allow them to finish to both complete their competition and attend the funeral. 

So we have had a lazy day, watching good desi style in the morning and then having an amazing lunch at the Islamabad Club, home of the elite riding school, pool, golf course and squash courts. Once again I was caught out with eating far too much good food, as everything was delicious. 

Shopping was next on the agenda, we had previously sent Shadar Prince Malik's chauffeur out to change money so we were all ready to shop. Scarves were the main target and we went to a shop to try and haggle hard, I'm not entirely sure we all managed a good deal, but we certainly have some very nice purchases. 

Dinner tonight was "in town", although, this actually meant and a one hour drive to the top of a mountain, seriously the top of a mountain, tracks were very narrow and we had to pass camels, and jackals on hair pin bends.

The view however, was amazing, the whole of Islamabad spread out in front of us in a beautiful display of lights. Food once again was amazing with fresh roasted lamb, amazing salads, fish and rice. I am beginning to feel a bit sorry for my horse and clearly need to either eat less or do more exercise.

I am now in no.32 being talked into blogging by fellow tentpeggers wanting to know what is going on, so I will keep the blog up to date!!

Tomorrow is the first day of competition and I have sent the guys on a mission to find out their horses names!! 

UK 2013 Season Round Up

I realize I am generally quite bad at updating throughout the UK season and tend to reserve the blog for international events

Well lets do a brief catch up on the season

FEG - May, 4 
Peer was up for this, but it was a rather wet and cold event for me, performance generally sub par and pretty depressing.

Sussex Peggers - April, 28
I brought Minnie to this event to give her another go - apparently she can run 100m in 7 secs, which is international speed. She did really well and we were placed in quite well winning sword and half section.
Minnie has now gone to a lovely home in Ireland to play polocrosse full time - she is missed as a small horse with a big personality


Windsor May, 10 
Peer up again for Windsor - individual performance was pretty shocking. Fortunately I upped my game and picked up every peg in team and the Frontiersmen went on to win the Team event and a rather nice rug.

Sussex Peggers June, 10 
Peer was up for this event and we hit form winning lance, sword, half section and oranges and taking the master at arms. The weather was brilliant, which might mean I am truly a fair weather rider!

Centaurs competition, June 16
This was the first of its kind, tentpegging mixed with horse back archery. The grounds are truly stunning at the Center of Horseback Combat, and it was a superb venue with a great pub in walking distance.
Sadly my archery is still in its infancy, I did manage to get one arrow in the boss, but apparently you still don't get points if its not in the scoring area - the answer is more practice!
The tentpegging went much better, and I was pleased to just pip Gerald, a fellow GB tentpegger in the tentpegging competition.

Royal Tournament, June 19

Peer at Royal Tournament

Yorkshire, June, 29-30

Sarah & Marquesa

Truly stunning venue, and an excellent training opportunity. I took two horses to give new recruit Marquesa a run. However Sarah was short a horse, so ended up loaning her for the competition. Being an ex-polo pony, training is relatively easy, but she needs to learn what its all about

Peer at Yorkshire

HCMR West Tofts July, 14

Marquesa Center with Team Pounsley

Once again I took Peer and Marquesa, but disaster struck on first day with Peer kicking Marquesa and leaving her lame.
Performance sub par - requiring improvement













Battle Proms
Battle Proms have been a mixed bag, Peer has done the full season and he has calmed with the pat a pony, and the introduction of being fed pimms fruit (he now sniffs passing glasses). However he is still fairly rude at the start of a run and any delays prompts rearing. With a lance in hand this is a hard habit to nip in the bud, and is caused as he tends to stress at events.


Despite this I have managed a 100% peg strike record at events, however cabbages tally is much worse, because on occasion I haven't made it down the run due to the dancing Peer antics.



Bicester & Finmere Aug, 11

Bicester and Finmere is now an annual event, which is great fun
















VWH Competition Aug 24-26
The Inaaugral VWH riding club competition, hopefully the first of many. This was relatively stressful as held at home, and I'm pretty poor at delegating!



Frampton, Sep, 8 
First outing off the farm of Coneja, and no small task with a crowd of 13,000. However Coneja was fabulous and handled it all in her stride, it was very refreshing to have such a well behaved pony! Strike record was back up to 100%, with the odd draw as unsoaked wooden pegs have a tendency to fly.

Once again the Frontiersmen championed over the RLC, RGH and Prince Malik's lancers to win the competition!

Cambridge Sep, 21-22
Second outing for Coneja in the national competition. However she has since learned what tentpegging is all about and is now, er, rather keen. I had some very interesting lines to pegs and rings. However for the oranges I was helped out by Sarah to keep her straight and we won the oranges!
Clearly needs a bit of work, but you cannot fault Coneja's enthusiasm

I do need to do some sports pyscology, as I'm not sure why my performance has generally been sub par at BTA events. Possibly politics related, but I need to clear my mind and achieve a zen like focus!

Day 7 India - 24th March 2013

Morning started with the usual breakfast and the hotel staff told us to read the newspaper, the reason was a big section on the British team pegging.

Today the morning session was team sword, round A went well with the Brits on fire to finish before lunch in first place.

Lunch followed at the sky city hotel and we managed to get ice cream for Gerald, but it was strawberry rather than green.

We also had to do a photo shoot at the hotel as they were using the teams staying there for PR.

Following lunch and with everyone telling us we were in first place unfortunately it did not quite go to plan and the two later runs on smaller pegs did not yield good results. We held on to bronze, but lost silver and gold to Iraq and India respectively.

Indian file followed, this is where you run one after the other, which is tricky in these conditions as you need to predict what your horse will do and also see your pegs through a cloud of dust.

We didn't do badly, but could not match the full houses of Sudan who claimed gold, Iraq silver and Australia bronze.

The evening was the gala dinner at the Radisson Blue

Day 6 India 23rd March 2013

Today started with team lance, and Swedish marching music due to popular demand from Maj P.

GB are always second to run and I'm afraid we were perhaps not as organised as we should have been. The start was messy and Geralds horse bolted the other way, the team had started but apparently talking mid way on your run is a bad idea, so we blanked

Dawn gave us a stiff talking to and the next run we managed a full house , the final run we had a mixed bag with 2 pegs carried.

We were 9th at lunch time and improvement for round B was still possible

Lunch was good and we fueled Gerald with a green ice cream (Wasn't mint or pistachio)

After lunch we stormed back to form and finish 5th, but not quite good enough to make it into the medals!

Next came the pairs and all the brits ran a blinding first run with double full houses. The seond runs were not quite as consistent from all countries, but Gerald and I continued with form and we one of the 3 pairs to finish carrying all pegs. We thought for a moment wde had silver, but the Sudanese were 0.07 second faster so just took it. Egypt had a resounding win as were the fastest.

The brits are pleased to finally be in the medals and have been celebrating.

We hope we can improve on this for the final day tomorrow!

Day 5 India 22nd March 2013

Today is rest day!

So no horses or pegging to report.

The team had a lovely time visiting various iconic landmarks including the moghul tower, lotus temple and various shopping bazaars that our driver insisted we visit

We had planned to visit a boot maker for Maj P, but unfortunately we ran into a riot and were stopped from reaching our destination by police, army and some rather large water canons

Dinner was quiet and we restocked Geralds ice cream levels, so we are expecting big things tomorrow!!

Day 5 India 22nd March 2013

Today is rest day!

So no horses or pegging to report.

The team had a lovely time visiting various iconic landmarks including the moghul tower, lotus temple and various shopping bazaars that our driver insisted we visit

We had planned to visit a boot maker for Maj P, but unfortunately we ran into a riot and were stopped from reaching our destination by police, army and some rather large water canons

Dinner was quiet and we restocked Geralds ice cream levels, so we are expecting big things tomorrow!!

Day 4 India 21st March 2013

Yesterday,  started with the remaining 30 people to run their rings and pegs. Due to some double full houses (all overarm) the brits were out of the medals, despite a good consistent team performance.

Individual sword came next, we started off well, but think lack of icecream may have impaired performance and unfortunately we didn't have any riders in round B

The competition was won in style by Bassim of Iraq with a full house in all rounds

We had our usual lunch break and the afternoon was going to be easier for me as Tina rode Chetak in the oranges

The afternoon was hot at 33oC, but we are slowly getting used to the team and with our factor 50 loreal sun cream no one had burnt.

The fruit used looked like unripe oranges, but were lime / Clementine sized and were hard as rocks. Normally an unsharpened sword would cut ripe oranges with no problems, but these rock hard versions had a tendency to fly off with just a bruised skin, rather than a slice to gain marks. Sarah did try eating one and reported it wasn't too bad and confirmed it was oranges and not limes!

Our swords became rather popular, as ours weren't blunt and much better than some, but definitely not as sharp and lethal as the Sudanese team swords!

Although we got some good scores, the sharper swords proved their worth and the top riders again all had full houses

We returned to the hotel for a quick turnaround and then food was being served in a banquet in the Sky City hotel. The was a bit disjointed, but we were pleased to see the grooms coming to dinner too

Following dinner members of each country were rounded up for a new world tentpegging meeting. Not much seems to have happened on the IETA front and everyone is keen to promote and grow the sport. It was a shame the South Africans were not present as it would have been useful to have their opinions

It was decided to form a new international federation and the rather exciting news for me is that I am joint secretary along with Col. Sarpartap Singh. There will be a new website coming, as soon as I am back with a full sized computer!

Day 3 India 20th march 2013

Day one started with a wake up call at 6.30am, which admittedly we did wonder if Dawn (manager) had arranged, but was actually the organisers.
We had a quick breakfast and headed for the other hotel (a 2 minute walk) only to be met by the bus who made an illegal U turn (well in British terms) and stopped outside our hotel. Apparently we were waiting for the Swedish, I blame their manager, Maj P!
So we headed for the ground and round one of individual lance. Rachel was riding Monika a small chestnut trialled yesterday on the mosquito broken bus saga, Gerald is riding mystic magic, who he has renamed mystic meg, due to a slight mix up in translation. Sarah is on Barba, a fizzy mare that apprently if you call Ba-ba black sheep results in your grooms referring to you as the British tomato...
I am on a kathiawari called chetak, who is quite grumpy and only appears to love Pat the groom. Although appears to have soften a bit to me today and only threatens to bite and pull evil faces!
As you can see we are all in our official kit, saddle cloths sponsored by haygain, shirts by oncology imaging, clothing by mark Todd and Sun screen by loreal!
So individual lance went ok for the British with everyone picking up points and Gerald and myself making it through to the final 25 for round B.
The sun is beating down today, so was definitely getting warmer, which is a challenge for the British used to cold miserable weather.
Lunch was back at the sky hotel and I am pleased to report that due to heat I think portion size is dropping, but the chaps still had pudding...
Back for round B and the brits were on fire, with Gerald picking up all pegs and myself just dropping one. We both quickly worked up the ranks with Gerald in the top 10 and me in the top 20 in a huge field.
Rings came next and Gerald stood down to allow Tina a run, and she proved why with a full run on rachels ginger Monika, Rachel had swapped to Geralds mystic and Sarah and I remained on our mounts.
The girls put up a good field and if it was team may well be in the leaders with Rachel and Tina on 28 and Sarah and I on 24. These were more invisible rings than last year as they were silver and a smaller diameter than last year as only Tina could wear the bangles!!!
Time was against us as we finished with 30 riders still to run, so we are unsure of the placing
A quick change later and we are on our way to dinner, it would appear a few teams may have been at the bar as there is bus karaoke going on with aussies, Egyptians, brits and Sweds belting out ditties
So one free bar later and things have got messy, we are all on top form.. Well some danced too much, some drank too much and others kept themselved to a safe distance....

Team listing for the World Cup

List of the teams - Qatar and India tbc

Pakistan
Raja
Wamiq
Haroon
Shahbez

Oman
Hamed manager
Mansor
Abdullah
Hilal
Hamood
Yusif
Humaid - admin
Ali
Hamood - media
Hamees
Nasier

GB
Dawn - manager
Gerald
Sarah
Jenna
Rachel
Tina
David - coach
Jerry - crew

Iraq
Mohammed
Mahood
Osama
Ali
Abdulkailq ayad
Salman

Qatar
Ali
Mohammed
Behet
Aplas

Sudan
Rafa - manager
Hatim
Mohamed
Shibali
Ashraf
Khalid
Walid

Australia
Judy - manager
Christina
Barry
Arthur
Neville

Kazakhstan
Sergi
Natlie
Nicoli
Max

Canada
Akaash

Germany
Norbert - manager
Jenny
Peter
Pierre
Heiko

Sweden
Johan
Marten
Klaus
Lars

Lebanon
Elie
Hussain
Georges
Tito
Pierre

Jordan
Ayad
Bassim
Ahmed
Hussan
Mamod

USA
Newly registered association
Ahmed Zubair

Sri Lanka
Serenager
Gajanayaka
Darmadasa
Senanayaka
Sarath kumara
Keerthirathna

India
Ram
Suresh
Ranveer
Jagtaap

Eqypt
Ahmed
Yaser
Mamdoh
Ayman
Zakzok

Day 2 India 19 March 2013

Today we went to the stadium to draw horses this is around a 20 minute journey from our hotels.

The process took quite a long time so the British and Swedish took the opportunity to soak up the sun. We then went to try and find our horses and immediately ran into a problem as we had only 3 out of 5 horses. One was injured and the other missing

So this meant only 3 riders got a practise runs at the stadium, however we were offered a chance to practise in the afternoon.

This afternoon Rachel, Gerald, Dawn, David and Johan (Swedish had the same issue) went off to try the missiing horses, which was apparently due to transport issues as the horses are 10km away from the stadium

In the meantime Sarah, Tina, Norola took the opportunity to go shopping. So we all got to ride in tuk tuks. However the mall was similar to the uk, including prices, so we just enjoyed looking around without spending any money.

Back at the hotel and we discovered that the others weren't back yet, which was a problem as dinner was at a different hotel.

However they arrived back and we did some bathroom shuffling to aid showering in super quick time, which did involve Gerald almost streaking down the hotel corridor!

So the story behind the late appearance involved a broken down bus, a walk to the stables and a walk back to the broken down bus. Plus an awol German rider, as Peter got on the wrong bus!!

We had a fairly long bus ride to the Radisson Blue hotel for a fantastc banquet. The long journey was definitely worth it for the fantastic food.

Unfortunately the British were lead astray by HRH Prince Malik, I think most of us ate far too many starters, so couldn't manage as much of the lovely ice cream as we would have liked (except Major P who was forced by HRH to eat more!!)