Ruahine Endurance Club held their second beach ride at Scotts Ferry on Saturday 8th September. We were again very lucky with the weather despite about 5 days of rain and southerlies leading up to it. I think people were pleased to get out and ride somewhere there wasn’t mud and we had very good entries again.

There were a total of 17 entries in the 40 km classes with Sandy Marshall and Jamila Two and Sacha Boyle on Ngapa Zircon being the only Intermediated riders (one senior, one junior; you guess which). The 40 km was completed between just under 3 hours up to 4 hours 20 minutes and all combinations at this distance successfully qualified. It was nice to have competitors travelling from Taumarunui and New Plymouth for the event and a shame that Tina Plastow couldn’t make it over from Hawkes Bay due to the float being stuck in the paddock after all the rain – it’s not often they get it worse than we do! 

Paula Watson had her horse Tres Bein LS back out in competition after 12 months off with injury so she was pleased to see him get through with no problems. There were also a mix of baby horses and seasoned campaigners out for the event and even one of the vet student helpers got a short notice call-up to ride 40 km – she really enjoyed it and could still walk the next day I think.

There were 6 competitors in the 25 km distance and 12 managed the 10 km. We assiduously monitored our H&S responsibilities and had 3 riders have to fill out an incident report after falling off – horse tripped, horse shied, horse bucked…….  Not sure how you can reduce the risk of these sorts of things occurring!  There was one vet-out for lameness at the end of the day.

The next Ruahine event will be over Labour Weekend and also near Bulls and we will be offering a full range of classes up to 80 km.