ESNZ Series Awards, Solway Showgrounds, Wairarapa, Saturday, April 10, 2021. Copyright: KAMPIC / Sarah Lord

Photo of Margaret and Ray Eggar at Series Finals

Margaret Eggar was first seen around the show jumping scene in the mid-eighties supporting her children who were riding ponies and horses.

She popped up again in circa 2007 helping husband Ray Eggar prepare the beginnings of the Rule Book as it appears now, which is in its fourteenth version. At about this time, the FEI required ESNZ Jumping to have a sophisticated timing system which provided the FEI with access to the progress of our competitors in the World Cup Series.

As there was no-one keen to operate this computer-based system which had to be used for all FEI events, Margaret took on the job as a temporary measure which was rather trying with very little support from the manufacturers and equipment that was still in its infancy around the world. The software was not user friendly and involved manually entering the names of all competitors and horses, but as time went on, she worked with the show secretaries and now can download the information on the day. Many long days were spent in the Judges box starting at 7am and often still there at 7pm with little breaks in between.

Livestreaming became another challenge as the two lots of software came together to provide the information appearing on the screens as you see today.

Margaret has been lucky to have met and worked with many judges, announcers, course designers and many other volunteers over the years and to be able to thank them all for their patience.

So here we are in the year 2021 and Margaret has now assisted another two operators to carry on. Although not completely retired, Margaret will still be in the background to assist David and Jenny.

ESNZ Volunteer of the Month receives a gift in recognition of their contribution; Margaret’s is on its way to her.

You can nominate your ESNZ Volunteer of the Month by emailing us at [email protected]  with Volunteer of the Month in the subject line.

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