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!