Horse of the Year

We were very lucky that our stay in New Zealand coincided with the Horse of the Year competition and even luckier that the farm we are staying in happens to be just one hour away. A few weeks ago I read ‘For the Love of Horses’ by Kelly Wilson about how three kiwi sisters got involved into helping to rehabilitate Kaimanawas (Local wild horses). In the book she talks a lot about the Horse of the Year competition and how important it is in the New Zealand horse competition scene (probably the most important event). 

It was indeed impressive to say the least. Thousands of competitors (3,000 we are told) and their horses came to Hastings to compete. Most stayed around the competition grounds in tents during the week long event. As we walked around we could see all the entire set up. I felt a little jealous even as I also used to go compete at events but never at an event to that scale where you would stay overnight with the other competitors. 

There were all sorts of competitions, from jumping to cross country and dressage. The one we were most interested in was the Kaimanawas Stallion Makeover. It sounds funny but the concept is great and follows the Mustang Makeover in the US. Every year or so 100-200 Kaimanawas horses are mustered from the wild and need to find new homes, without which they go to become horse meat. 

The trainers that participate in the Makeover have 250 days to train the horses. They cannot chose whichh horse they take, they are assigned randomly. By the end of the 9 months, they show the jury what they have managed to achieve with the horses. The most impressive was the final where the 8 best trainers had a 4 minutes free style demonstration. One of them we had already seen a few days earlier at a ‘Meet & Greet’ event. That horse is pretty much bomb proof. The trainer could get huge plastic sheets on the horse and crack whips right next to it and it wouldn’t budge.