Day 4 - Pakistan

Well another eventful day

The competition has begun in earnest, although slightly later than advertised due to dew appearing this morning.

Uncle John & Jacky

One special mention must go to "Uncle John" from South Africa, who we have now adopted as British and he is currently our team manager and coach for this trip!

My trusty little black stallion

Around 9.30am we went to the ground, challenge one was to identify your horse, which meant you had to remember what it looked like, or in Michael's case locate one the Prince Malik was arranging.


I located my trusty black stallion, who again I asked his name, but "sami" is the closest I can get, as it was a lot longer..

I must point out Michael is currently on horse number 5 of this competition - problems have included eating the ears on one, having another than ran into the fence to stop and even then bumped its nose, having another that napped and finally another one Prince Malik decided was too slow and swapped him again! It was a bit of a stress as they were calling him to run before he had actually got a horse (SA having the same problem), but we did manage to overcome the obstacles!

The morning session was 3 runs of individual lance. Which tested our riders as this is so different to what we are used to in the UK, however everyone coped very well.

Tina on her white stallion

Gerald on Prince Malik's Stallion 

Jacky on her dark bay stallion

Gerald on his bay pegging horse

We started with the parade, which was a little interesting as Gerald has been transferred to Prince Malik's palomino stallion, who has great paces. Unfortunately he had to lead the British rather than ride in section, as my stallion squealed and tried to fight every time her came near

In fact my stallion is like a little terrier and tries to pick fights with all the other stallions no matter how big there are. Still at least with his neighing and squealing everyone knows where I am!!



Gerald was the star in the morning, picking up all his pegs. The first two runs were on cardboard pegs, and the final run was on 2" date palm pegs.
As you can see the Brits managed to pick up a few of these date palm pegs

Lunch was superb as usual and we had fish, for the first time, which was a welcome change as I've been living off chicken and we also treated to an ice cream, which was good in the heat.

Being a complete weirdo, I am in fact still wearing a thermal top underneath my polo shirt, but then I do tend to get cold no matter what the climate. It is increasing in temperature every day, but its currently around 22oC during the day.

One of the guys from the high commission who was kindly taking photographs! 

When we came back from lunch we found the staff from the British High Commission had driven from Islamabad, which is 4 hours away, to support the British riders. They were extremely impressed and supportive of our efforts to encourage good sporting relationships between our countries. They also agreed the media is incredibly overstated about the safety issues and were emphatic that both Islamabad and Lahore were perfectly safe.

The team will be featured in the High Commission newsletter!

Also we have all been giving interviews to various local news channels including express news and Such TV.

Today Tina and I got talked into doing a photoshoot which included walking along and putting a traditional pink turban on

Gerald is incredibly popular with the crowd and the tv shows and very nearly missed a run, as had to break from the interview to go and hit another peg.

So the team did well with everyone contributing points, unfortunately we didn't managed to beat the South Afrians who ran off for individual 1-5th in the main competition and also took the top 2 slots in the masters, but Pakistan still won bronze.

Out the 6 teams we are ranked 4th, but hopefully the sword competition tomorrow might improved out chances

Once again we have been taken to another horse farm for dinner, where again we were treated like royalty and have been well fed and watered (I had some more pink tea... once again I asked another local who couldn't tell me what was in it...!)

I am actually a bit worried about this, as I am pretty sure I am heavier than when I arrived in Pakistan. I think I might have to stick to the rice tomorrow to work off too much good food!