NITE, Taupo January 2000 - a review by Rosanne (slightly abridged here). Our club, the North Wellington Riding Club, decided many months ago (about July 99) to commit to hosting NITE and so the process began, first with fundraising and some serious event planning. Bev Birkett up in Taupo was my constant source of local information and help, plus we gathered ideas from Glenn, Val, Debbie and the previous hosts Tauranga RC. We held monthy committee meetings and beavered on with our ideas and tasks. NITE 2000 seemed so far away, but how those last few months flew! You know what it's like organising a team, well try TWO teams and the running of the event as well... we were like headless chickens in December. Plus the whole country seemed to be so preoccupied with the damn millennium! The many months of preparation, phone calls, greasy letters to sponsors and judges, more phone calls, team practices, making bridle numbers, designing logos, collating entries and prizes all came to a close and we headed north on Wednesday Jan 5th in a massive convoy of cars/trailers/floats. Thursday was spent setting up our huge marquee, settling in our horses, finding out what we were allowed to use at the Centre, weed-eating the cross country course (!), and allocating yards and paddocks for all the teams. We partied pretty hard that night. I attempted to party whilst working on the Programme on my laptop all night, finishing just after midnight, phew! Friday dawned and started calmly enough. More practices for our teams, with Sarah and her helpers putting the finishing touches to the Obstacle Course. Everyone had strict instructions to stop riding after lunch and help get the showjump course and quadrille arena built. Of course we couldn't have the quadrille where we wanted it either. Juliet and Locky had to haggle (aka seriously grease) to the Centre manager just to have it within reach of the Charisma Hall. Not much point in having a quadrille without any music facilities is there?! I took off to town with Stewart (our 11 month old son) and my mother (both of whom I hardly saw for the rest of the weekend) to buy some last minute supplies and get the programme printed. The others made a fabulous job of building the courses. By 5pm the campsite was looking decidedly full, the teams had arrived and reality struck! Brian and his helpers were worked off thier feet all weekend sorting out camping/yarding issues, as well as all riding in teams themselves, a brilliant effort. I got through the dreaded briefing and Sarah then did a great job of commentating her pretend horses through the Obstacle Course demonstration. Formalities finished. Off to an early night then? I don't think so! Once again we partied into the night, although may of us worked while we drank... Lisa sorting out judges' and stewards' equipment, riders cleaning gear, sewing quadrille outfits (how they did this half cut I don't know!) our cats team tried on their costumes for the first time - the screams of laughter could be heard for miles as they squeezed their bodies into children's outfits! Not to mention poor Brian in a tutu, what can I say! Saturday dawned and the competition began. Thankfully all judges turned up and we attempted to get started on time. After a few glitches with the RT radios and score sheets we were off. I was writing for John Moore who judged Turnout. He was most impressed with the effort teams had gone to. There were some very smart club uniforms and some teams in particular put in a lot of spit and polish on their horses and tack. John had me in fits of laughter with his dry sense of humour. We had a lot of fun, and he really put the riders at ease too. He told them to relax and enjoy the competition, which is what NZRC is all about. The Obstacle Course rode very well, apart from a few horses getting their noses stuck in the tree when opening the gate! I later heard that our timekeepers Shane and Steve gave the riders hell with their cheeky comments, so there was no shortage of humour on Day One. Phase One finished right on time, with Papakura's Fab Four taking out the honours. Quadrille time!!! The banks began to line with spectators. The only dampener was the weather which threatened all afternoon and then made conditions difficult for the last few teams. Thank goodness for the two gazebo tents we'd brought with us. One minute they were protecting our officials from the sun, the next minute from the rain! It was good to see the quadrille judges inspecting each team up close. They were most impressed with the themes and costumes, in particular Toy Oto who wom the Artistic Impression Trophy this year. I thought the Sunchymers looked amazing with their spectacuar paint jobs on the horses and also the Bones team. I was totally surprised at prize giving to find out that one of our teams, Cha Cha d'Amour, had won! They were dressed as Spanish dancers and began with a canter entrance, followed by dance off theme accompanied by some pretty funky music. When you consider that there were only 9 points difference (out of a possible 100 points) in the scores between first place and tenth place you realise what a tough time the judges had this year. I know that the Quadrille is only one of four phases but it's what makes NITE so different from other competitions. An awful lot of creativeness, effort and practice goes into each team's performance - "well done" everyone. At 6pm we had a group cross country course walk with Robbie MacLean our course builder. This proved to be very worthwhile (if you could keep up!) and any questions were quickly answered. It was good to have the various options explained and work out the best team strategy... well, in theory anyway! We then ran the quadrille prizegiving back at our marquee (with free bubbly on arrival) and finally got to show off some of the wonderful prizes donated by our sponsors, as well as the awesome rosettes (for each Phase) and sashes for Overall places. I had pestered potential sponsors to bits over the preceding months and it had paid off. Our club wanted to make NITE 2000 a special millenium celebration event so having great prizes and giveaways certainly helped achieve our goal. We wouldn't expect it every year! We received in excess of $2000 in donated prizes, plus we received several thousand dollars in sponsorship to assist with rosettes and event cots, which certainly helped. Our sponsors were named in the Programme - please suppport them! Day One competition over, part time again! Locky had organised a special President's Dinner as a thankyou to our officials and being lucky enough to have one of the few seats, I can honestly say it was a fantastic meal. After yet another late night I think I managed four hours' sleep before waking at 6am to start cleaning my gear. Thankfully Juliet and Crystal had offered to get my horse ready and all I had to do was get on him and get around the cross country. But I suddenly felt incredibly weak and seriously doubted whether I could manage it! Old Mac may be 20-something but he goes like a bat out of hell in a group situation. But we only had three riders so still feeling sick I jumped on. Mind you, who doesn't feel sick before any cross country? Lisa had all the officials well sorted for the Cross Country phase and the event ran very smoothly, finishing on time, so needless to say there were no serious mishaps. Our team was second to go and started off okay with Shelly in the lead, although both Sarah and I were having problems with brakes and at times steering! Our major problem occured at the last fence when Mac bolted and I couldn't stop him. I had visions of galloping uncontrollably through the campsite, and I'm getting too old to fall off at speed! So I hauled with all my remaining strength on the left rein with both hands, dug my left leg in and steered him into the fenceline, jumping off and collapsing on the ground about 200 metres past the finish line - just in time to see Sarah's horse Timmy doing exactly what I had tried to avoid, but without her in the saddle! Unfortunately Sarah had parted company with Timmy at the last due to a huge jump into the double. She was very lucky to only sustain bruising and being winded. Once on her feet she was more worried about having caused our team to be eliminated, but again, NITE is all about fun and sportsmanship, so elimination is almost impossible. Thanks to our helpers/grooms we were able to get back out to the course and watch most of the other teams go round. Bev did a wonderful job of commentating so even back at camp you could hear the progress. It's great fun to watch, with each team yelling encouragement and most riders seemed to be enjoying the course. One team (from Tauranga I think) had a problem at the water when the rider fell after the jump (thankfully) and the horse galloped back to camp. Their team of three continued, and then, after a long walk, so did the other rider - well done! Our other team, Purr Fection, must have learnt from our wild round and they took it nice and steady, all riders completing the course together I'm pleased to say. I think they actually had the slowest round, and probably the loudest too! The best of the bunch though were the Taupo Devils who must have plenty of experience riding together (and at this venue!), closely followed (only one point behind) by Masterton's Happy Hunters who obviously do just that! Many thanks to those people who assisted as jump judges for the morning, as well as the starters, stewards, scorers, judges, sound technician (aka Glenn on his pushbike!), caterers, runners, etc. The show-jumping phase commenced around midday. Margaret acted as course designer/builder and now assisted as judge with David. They powered through the teams, ringing the bell to start as soon as a hoof entered the arena. Margaret had done a marvellous job with the course design as it jumped very well. Most who attempted the joker cleared it, and having the new rules meant that everyone could give the show jumping a go with at least 6 jumps under 60cms. This received some positive feedback from teams. I'm pleased to say we didn''t have any complaints during the entire event and it is very much appreciated after all the effort everyone goes to, especially since it's all done on a voluntary basis. My mad old horse Mac redeemed himself and completed a nice show jumping round, but I wasn't going to push it and try the joker! Sarah and Timmy had a good round too, and Shelly (riding Billie) cleared the joker. So with sufficient aggregate points I was thrilled to win a rosette for 3rd place with our team. Toy Oto completed a hat trick for 2nd place, with the Happy Hunters being the show jump champions of the day. Overall winners were Papakura RC's Fab Four, 2nd Otorohanga RC's Toy Oto, 3rd North Wellington RC's Cha Cha de Amor, 4th Papatoetoe RC's Star Wars. I only wish everyone could have received something as it's such a huge effort to put a team in to NITE, no matter where you are placed. Still, I trust everyone enjoyed the competition and their souvenir tee shirts. My only regret was being too busy to socialise with the other teams and not being able to support our own two teams very much. Apart from that, hosting NITE was a great experience, a demonstration of dedication and teamwork within our club, and enormous support from our family and friends. As you can imagine, some of our lot were just too buggered on Sunday night and crashed early. But the ones who did manage to stay up partied hard, including the Franklin and Hamilton teams! To give details would be telling tales, but a certain lady in a wine-stained nightie and a huge hat will know what I mean! The marquee rocked with music and dancing well past midnight. Packing up next day with a hangover wasn't much fun, was it Sarah? My thanks to all the people who attended, who either competed or helped, and made NITE 200 truly an event to remember. Thank you also to the many clubs and people that have since sent letters of appreciation to us. We're glad you enjoyed it and we look forward to seeing you all again next year!!! Cheers, Rosanne Mulholland North Wellington Riding Club