Victory and the All-Stars Academy (11 page)

Shane Campbell's horse, Bendigo Queen, was a highly-strung warmblood, prone to losing her cool in the dressage ring. To make sure the mare was calm during her test, Shane had spent nearly an hour working her in so that she wouldn't explode with energy in the ring. Now he stood at the entrance to the dressage arena and signalled to Ryan, the Australian
chef d'équipe
, that he was on schedule and ready to begin.

Ryan nodded back, started the music and Bendigo Queen entered the arena, putting in a bright and peppy working trot to the strains of classical violin.

“It's Vivaldi's ‘Four Seasons',” Tara told them. “A
good choice. It's a perfect piece for freestyle dressage to music. It's got a good rhythm for trot and canter.”

Stella sighed. “I told him he should use something from
High School Musical
instead.”

Kate giggled. “You know, Stella, he might look like Zac Efron, but he isn't really him!”

“I know!” said Stella. “But it would have been cute, wouldn't it?” She stared dreamily at Shane.

“Hello? Back to reality now, Vanessa Hudgens,” Tara said firmly, snapping her fingers in front of Stella's lovesick face and making the other girls who were lined up along the side of the arena laugh.

It was a gorgeous sunny day at the Royal Showgrounds, but even though the scene on the sidelines looked relaxed, all of the New Zealand team were tense. Issie's stomach was a knot of nerves. When they had arrived in their horse trucks after the long drive from Havenfields that morning, the girls had been in high spirits—until they saw the crowds gathering in the stands around the stadium and the size of the jumps in the arena. Then the nerves kicked in. This was the big event, the one they had been training for, and it had finally arrived.

It was 9 a.m. and the scoreboard at the far end of the field was currently blank. Only the names of the two teams were illuminated at the very top of the board. The Australian team had chosen to call themselves the Super Roos. The New Zealanders, of course, were the All-Stars.

“We're in a fortunate position,” Avery told the girls as he joined them and Tara alongside the dressage arena. “The Super Roos lost the coin toss, so that means their whole team will go first for every phase and they'll all complete their dressage tests before we begin. It gives us the chance to learn from their mistakes.”

There must have been hundreds of spectators with their eyes on the arena as Shane rode his way through the first dressage test of the day. The crowds didn't bother Bendigo Queen though, and the bay mare didn't put a foot wrong. As Shane walked the mare out on a loose rein, Stella gave him a wolf whistle and Shane grinned back and gave her a little wave.

“He is in the other team, remember?” Morgan said with a scowl.

“And it's a friendly competition and he's my boyfriend, remember?” Stella shot back sarcastically.

The next Australian rider entered the arena. It was Bret and his horse Get Smart, trotting neatly in time to the music coming out of the loudspeakers. The song was the classic 60s hit, ‘Puppet on a String'. It had a bouncy beat and Get Smart lifted his legs in a lovely trot, executing a perfect canter down the side of the arena.

As she watched the others ride, Issie kept running through her own dressage routine over and over again in her head.

“Ohmygod!” Charlotte groaned as if she were reading Issie's mind. “I just know I'm going to get into the arena and totally forget all my moves.”

“Come on,” Stella said. “Watching them is just making us more nervous. Let's get out of here.”

Back at the horse truck the girls finished plaiting manes and oiling hooves while Avery consulted his clipboard for the running order.

“Kate, you're the captain so you'll be first. You need to begin your warm-up now,” Avery told her. “You're due in the arena in thirty minutes. Then it's Charlotte, then Laura, then Emily. Dee Dee is next, then Stella, Morgan and Issie is the last to go. Pay attention,
everyone, because the order that you're riding in for the dressage will remain the same for the showjumping and cross-country phases as well.”

Avery looked at his watch. “Any questions? No? Right then! What are you all doing still standing here? Let's get those horses ready and get in that arena and win!”

Issie didn't see the first four tests that her New Zealand teammates rode that day—she was too busy getting Victory ready and warming him up in the schooling zone.

The brown gelding was a little hotter than usual, as the crowds and the other horses had put him on edge. When Issie was saddling him up, he could hardly stand still, and she tried her best to keep calm herself so she didn't make things worse by passing her own nerves on to the horse. Could Victory sense the butterflies that were churning in her tummy right now? Thoroughbreds were known for losing their cool in the dressage phase. Issie knew that the worst possible thing would be for Victory to explode with tension during his dressage test and blow their chances before they even reached the showjumping phase.

Once Issie began to ride him though, Victory seemed to settle into his work and relax. She rode the gelding in serpentines and did figures of eight, cantering on both reins, doing perfect circles. After twenty minutes of this, Victory was ready to go into the ring, but it wasn't time yet. There were still another three All-Stars to go before them, so Issie joined the rest of her teammates to wait her turn at the side of the arena.

She arrived just in time to see Dee Dee enter the ring to perform her test. As Dee Dee's theme song poured out of the sound system, Issie burst out laughing. It was ‘Dancing Queen'! Dee Dee had chosen Abba for her freestyle music!

‘Dancing Queen' faded into ‘Fernando', another Abba song, as Dee Dee did the most beautiful half-pass across the arena, Floyd crossing his fetlocks neatly without missing a beat.

Dee Dee's test was brilliant. Issie watched as Dee Dee finished off by riding her flying changes perfectly down the centre of the arena. She still found it amazing that her room-mate could be such a total klutz in everyday life and yet be such a genius when she was on a horse.

“She's aced it!” Avery said proudly as Dee Dee rode out of the ring and headed back to them with a grin on her face. “We still haven't seen the scores yet, but I'm willing to bet that this is the best test we've seen so far today.”

Dee Dee gave Floyd a huge hug around his milky white neck. “Oh, you are such a fab horse!” she cooed over him. “Good boy!”

“I can't believe you did your test to a medley of Abba songs!” Issie said.

“Of course I did,” Dee Dee grinned back. “Why do you think I've been playing Abba non-stop on my iPod since I got here? I was figuring out my dressage moves!”

Stella was up next and she made quite an entrance, trotting Woody down the centre line to the
Madagascar
soundtrack. ‘
I Like To Move It, Move It
' The music thumped through the loudspeakers and Woody swung his trot along neatly in time.

It was a tidy test and Avery and Tara looked pleased with the results on the scoreboard. At this stage it looked like the Super Roos and the All-Stars were almost neck and neck, with just two dressage tests left to complete.

Issie couldn't watch Morgan do her test. She was too busy giving Victory one last warm-up lap around the edge of the arena. As the last All-Star to ride, she was even more nervous than she expected. The others had all performed so well, she would have to ride her freestyle perfectly if she wanted to make it into the top half of the team scoreboard. She trotted a lap around the outside of the ropes until Morgan left the arena to the sound of applause and the judge signalled to Issie that it was her turn to start.

Issie stood at the gates and nodded at Avery to start the music. Even before it began, Issie was already playing the song in her head. She had spent the past two weeks trying to get the beat ingrained in her brain,
dum-dah-dah-de-dum
. Now, as her theme song began to boom over the loudspeaker, she nudged Victory firmly with her heels right on cue and the brown horse rose up into a perfectly timed trot, entering down the centre line of the arena.

The
Black Beauty
theme music blared out of the loudspeakers. It was the perfect choice for Victory. The brown gelding seemed to swing his hocks along in time to the rhythm as Issie took him across the arena
and asked him to do an extended trot. Issie moved into her half-passes, and Victory began crossing his hind legs expertly as he skipped sideways across the sand like the accomplished schoolmaster that he was.

Issie tried to focus on her timing, knowing that there were points to be gained if she kept her horse's stride exactly in time with the music. She didn't need to worry though. Victory struck off perfectly on all her cues, and when he trotted up the centre line once more to halt for the judge, he came to a standstill precisely at the moment when the music stopped.

There was more applause from the sidelines as they left the arena on a long rein, and Issie had a huge grin on her face as she gave Victory a slappy pat on his neck.

“You're a total superstar,” she told the brown horse. “That was amazing!”

It was the best dressage test that Issie had ever done. But was it the best of the day? She knew that Dee Dee and Morgan had both aced their tests too, so all she was hoping was that her effort would at least put her near them in the top half of the scores.

“We won't have to wait long,” Dee Dee said.
“Everything seems to be fast with Express Eventing—even the scoring.”

She was right. The final dressage scores were posted within minutes and the girls were thrilled. Issie had come third in the All-Stars' team rankings—behind Dee Dee in first place and Morgan in second.

Dee Dee's test had been the top score of the day, but the Super Roos had put in some good tests too and when the top four scores were added up from each team, the Super Roos were in the lead by a slim margin.

Eventing is a strange business, where the lowest score indicates the winner. So the Super Roos took the lead on a score of 172 compared to the All-Stars' score of 179. The Super Roos were ahead by only seven points!

Kate had been the All-Star rider with the fourth highest score and she was beaming with pride. Charlotte came in fifth place and then Laura, Stella and Emily.

Avery was pleased with the results. “It's not surprising that Laura and Emily came at the bottom of the field,” he reasoned. “They're both cross-country
specialists really—dressage isn't their strength and it's not the reason they made the team.”

With the dressage out of the way, showjumping and cross-country loomed on the horizon. The riders were given a chance to walk both the courses before lunch break, and the All-Stars had Tara and Avery walking with them.

The showjumping circuit had been erected right in the centre of the stadium. It was a very tightly constructed course of twelve fences, all classic post and rails. They had been brilliantly decorated with conifer pots at the corners and white pickets with brightly coloured advertising hoardings for the fill underneath.

“Don't let any of that bother you,” Avery said. “In essence, these fences are very straightforward. Watch the striding on the double and don't cut the corner when you're riding the line to the last fence.” He looked pleased. “We should see some clear rounds over this course.”

From the showjumping course the riders walked the line they would take on their horses to reach the pit stop about a hundred metres away. Here, in the roped-off enclosure, they would perform their quick
change, aided by their fellow team members, before remounting and riding again.

“Remember,” Avery said, “that all of this will be done against the clock. You're racing the whole time.”

From the pit stop they headed out to face the first cross-country jump, a wooden hayfeeder planted with yellow marigolds along the top of it.

Issie stood next to the hayfeeder and felt herself tense up as she realised it was the same height as her shoulder.

“One metre-twenty. I knew Delaney Swift would build them to their maximum height allowance,” Avery said to Tara, looking more than a little worried. “It's not so much the size of these fences that concerns me though—it's the course itself. It's a bit of a maze, isn't it?”

He was right. As the girls began to walk the course, they had trouble figuring out which jump came next. Cross-country courses usually flow out over lots of open green farmland, but the Express cross-country had been built inside the confines of the stadium, which meant that to make room for the twenty jumps, Delaney Swift had backtracked and zigzagged over the arena.

“Take this fence,” Avery said, gesturing to a corner combination that required horses to jump a corner and then go up on to a bank, taking two strides before jumping down again.

“You'll be jumping it as fence number six going this way,” he gestured, turning to the right, “and then you jump it again from the opposite direction as fence number twelve, taking the bank first and then the corner.”

“Tom is right,” Tara agreed. “It's a complex course. You'll have to be focused the whole time to stay on track.”

To make it even more confusing, some of the fences had options. At the seventh jump, the water complex, you could either jump straight in over a narrow brush jump to enter the pond, followed by another even narrower brush in the middle of the water, and then a big wooden retaining wall coming out of the water, or you could go the long way and jump down another retaining wall to come sideways into the water.

Tara waded out into the water in her Hunter wellingtons to pace out the strides between the brush
fences. “The short route over the brush will save at least ten seconds,” she insisted. “With time faults to consider, I want to see all of you taking the shortest route.”