Well Adelaide’s flight to the UK has been confirmed as the 13th June 2018. Adelaide and I will be flying with Equestrian Australia’s recently partnered horse freight company Equine International Airfreight. Our flight will be departing from Melbourne.
As you can imagine there’s still lots to organise! Oh let the packing begin for both horse and human… but it will have to wait until tomorrow as today Adelaide and I are off to the lovely Wallaby Hill Farm for the NSW Squad School. For some last minute lessons with Prue Barrett and Rod Brown. I always look forward to our squad training days at WHF, beautiful property, amazing arenas and surfaces to ride on and of course great coaches. Tomorrow will be gallop day at the lovely Hannover Lodge managed by Hinnerk Huppe. Adelaide and I are very lucky to be able to use the hill/sand gallop track which is conveniently next door to Willow Park. Friday will be busy getting the Bates Equestrian Cross Country course ready for our Bates Ultimate Training Clinic’s that is being held over the weekend to help raise money for our trip to the UK. Lessons and training rounds will be coached by myself and the wonderful Sandy Lucas. Next week will be packing, packing and some more packing. Some how I will also try to get to Melbourne 3DE to coach students that are competing in the CCI1* & 2*. I will also fit in driving Adelaide to Melbourne for his flight and try have some last minute family time. The last 10 days have been pretty crazy and I already feel like I’m living out of a suitcase. The team had 3 days in Tamworth competing. I didn’t ride but drove the gooseneck, groomed for William, coached lots of students and cooked for the extended family. Home one day and then headed to Perth for 3 days of coaching. Arrived in Perth to find out Matthew Bates had taken an acrobatic tumble off a breaker, Matt managed to land on his feet only to have the breaker stand on his foot and break it. Matthew is now out of action for 6 weeks. Had a great three days coaching and managed to miss all the wet weather that Perth received. We also had a great fundraising night which helped raise nearly $1 600. It was great to catch up with so many people from the west coast especially those friends that have been following my career right from the start. Yes there were a few stories told about my youth. Back home for a few days and on Monday we headed to Orange for Williams Cross Country running schools competition. William ran super despite having a cold and finished in 10th place which now sees him go to the next competition at Eastern Creek on the 14th June. Which is a little sad as Adelaide and I will be up in the air somewhere and will miss seeing William run. The Campaign Aachen/Tryon fundraising is still in full force with the online auction nearly ready to launch. Thank you to the amazing people that have donated gifts for this auction. The auction will be hosted by nominate and will be live soon. If you would like to donate a prize or gift for the online auction please contact either Claire Earle [email protected] or Georgie Lorson [email protected] The GoFundMe fundraising page is up and running and many people have already donated. Thank you to those people, your generosity is greatly appreciated. If you would like to donate please click on the link below https://au.gofundme.com/christinebatesWEGcampaign We are also in the process of setting up an Australian Sports Foundation fundraising page which will enable donors to make a tax deductable donation. We will let you all know when it’s ready to use. If you don’t wish to donate to my fundraising cause that’s OK. But I would personally love it if you would consider donating to another great charity in honour of a very special person that is no longer with us- Caitlyn Fischer. Caitlyn’s parents Mark and Ailsa are supporting a great charity called Tabitha Australia in loving memory of their daughter. For more information on this very deserving cause please head over to http://www.tabithaaustralia.org.au/. Looking forward to keeping you all updated over the next crazy two weeks! Christine Xx
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Well… Some rather exciting news from Bates eventing with Adelaide passing the vet examinations with flying colours. Adelaide is well and truly in the best form of his life and with his current successes we are very excited to steam ahead with our WEG endeavours.
We are well into the planning stages now and have just finished revamping the website which will continue to be updated throughout our journey. Funding for the trip is also well and truly underway with the setup of our GoFundMe page (link on our donations page). A online silent auction will shortly be set up which will offer an array of great items up for grabs, so stay tuned for that one! We are also looking into running a combined cross country clinic with Sandy Lucas at Willow Park before Adelaide and I’s departure. Any donation small or large is greatly appreciated and will contribute towards getting Adelaide based in the UK. If you would like to donate a prize for the silent online auction please contact Claire Earle Mb 0439 028 399 or email: [email protected] or Georgie Lorson Mb: 0410 550 876 or [email protected] There is still much more planning to do which includes confirming Adelaide’s official flight date out of Australia but we are all starting to get a bit excited over here at Bates Equestrian! We can also confirm that Adelaide still has no idea about the trip and we plan on keeping it that way until he is on the tarmac! Shoosh Don’t tell Adelaide. Stay tuned! Christine My first blog and I'm not really sure where to begin. Since my last post you could say life has been a bit of a roller coaster however to tell this story we need to start at Tamworth CIC3* in August 2017. Entered on Ned O’Reilly and Adelaide hill there were plenty of emotions heading into this event, as it was my first eventing start back since April 2016. To say that it didn't go to plan would be an understatement. After an incident in the warm arena with an official I did my dressage tests on both horses and then promptly withdrew them. Disappointed and feeling deflated this was not the comeback to eventing I had planned. 2016 was a year that has and will forever change who I am and my outlook on life, the tragic deaths of Olivia Inglis and our very own working pupil Caitlyn Fischer made me loose hope for the sport I had once loved so deeply. This alongside the untimely injury that stopped Adelaide's Campaign to Rio was very hard to deal with, I was no longer sure I wanted to be an elite eventing rider or coach let alone go to an event. I can honestly say I found rock bottom, and I can tell you now it was not a pretty place to be.
Luckily some pretty special people stepped in and helped me rebuild myself. Prue Barrett kindly told me to stop putting myself under so much pressure wise words that I use everyday in my outlook on life. Equestrian Australia offered me support with Behavioural strategist Warren Kennaugh who helped me understand that I must learn to operate differently as my old way of life was not going to work for me anymore as so many things had change. The new motto was accept the new different. I made some big changes and focused a little bit more on me. Some days I hated the new different but over time I could see the benefits. For my next start I dropped both the horses back to the CNC2.5* at Sydney Eventing. They went well finishing 2nd & 5th. I then felt I was ready to go 3* again, I wanted to do it and prove to myself that I was able to get this box ticked off. We were soon heading to Melbourne CIC3*. Both horses did good dressage tests and ok show jumping rounds. Adelaide and Ned were both awesome XC just picking up some time, this meant we finished out of the top placing’s but I’m ok with that. I left Melbourne with the attitude one event at a time. The next big event was Adelaide CIC3* with Adelaide Hill. For the first time I asked Matthew and William to stay at home. I wanted to just be a rider and focusing on the goal I had to set- Winning. Adelaide was super all week and we managed to achieve our goal and stand proudly in first place on the podium. Adelaide had finally won at Adelaide. For the first time in a long time I sat down and made a plan. A plan that I thought was realistic and achievable. I decided to aim Adelaide for Sydney 3DE CCI3*. I worked out which events he would run at in the lead up to the event so he would be in peak fitness. I wanted him to go well and I wanted the qualification for WEG. I was confident that if we could perform well in all three phases that we would be hard to beat. I can honestly say that it was not until after Sydney 3DE that I considered ourselves competitive for the selection onto the Australian Team for WEG. After planning the trip of a lifetime 2 years ago and it all going so wrong I had come to the conclusion that the dream of taking a horse overseas to compete was probably not ever on the cards for me again and that was ok. I love what I do and to come and win again at Sydney was a huge emotional challenge. Adelaide and I have had a fantastic run of events with winning our last three CIC3*'s and most recently the CCI3* at Sydney. With this in mind we are now looking to take Adelaide to the UK & Europe. I feel that this will give Adelaide the best preparation possible for WEG. At this stage we are planning to do Barbury CIC and hopefully make the Aussie Team for Aachen CIC3* - Nations Cup. So this week Adelaide will under go several veterinarian examinations to make sure that he has pulled up from Sydney 3DE feeling 100% fit. As I certainly don't want to embark on another fundraising campaign to head overseas if Adelaide is not up to performing at his best. It would not be fair to Adelaide nor my team mates if he was not in peak condition. By the end of this week a decision will be made on whether we begin a campaign trail for WEG. Stay tuned. Crazy eventer life. |