Supergroom all ready for the day’s action.
Actually, a confession. In the last decade or so it’s my ONLY time BE/FEI fence judging. I feel rather guilty just writing this. In fairness I have the usual excuse that anyone with a chaotic life, hectic career and two horses has – lack of time. When you work a good proportion of weekends and try to fit the housework, husband and competing schedules for two horses into the remainder there are very few days left over to spend volunteering. Add to this the fact that where I used to live most events were a 2hr+ drive away and the whole concept of helping out never got off the ground. Sure, I organised shows for the hunt, helped out at RC fixtures and generally did my bit in the local area but I never got round to putting anything back into eventing – which is, after all, pretty much my raison d’etre.
I’d booked a week off work months in advance to enable me to compete at Osberton CCI*, but as the season progressed it became obvious that it would be impossible to find enough non-abandoned runs to get the horse the relevant experience under its belt. I didn’t want to go with just the minimum QRs. So I scrapped the idea of competing, but still had the time off work. I had a sudden moment of inspiration. Why not still go to Osberton, but to fence-judge instead of to take part? At the very least surely watching a bunch of international cometitors tackling something at the limits of my capabilities would be more interesting (and educational!) than a day spent watching 300 BE90 competitors jumping the same fence. Why not jump straight in at the deep end at start at the heady heights of a three day event? I even managed to talk Supergroom into accompanying me, though we did wobble slightly when we got our letter asking us to be present for a 7.30pm briefing. Especially as the venue was 2hrs away!
On the day we had lovely weather (though being September it was minus-something degrees when we took up position). We got given a good fence – as obvious novices they’d taken care not to give us anything too complicated. It was a hanging log between two trees with the ground running away on landing and a choice of angles on the approach. The 2* version was next to it and was the same, just slightly bigger and with a larger drop. We had a good view of the start/finish and the first few fences. We were sent out onto the course with huge packed lunches, radio, stopwatches, paperwork, flags, whistles and all the necessary paraphenalia. We’d had a pretty brief briefing to be honest – everyone else seemed to be a ‘professional fence judge’ who already knew the job inside out and they seemed to assume, as a rider, that I’d pretty much know the score too.
The assistant fence judges ‘replacing’ divots.
It really was a good day. I watched approximately 200 people jump our fences – ranging from the classy to the, erm, wobbly – and I swear they took 200 different lines of approach! I caught one loose horse which had fallen further up the course and run back to our fence and even found time to video a few friends. We were utterly stuffed full of food and drink. Considering that we spent about 9hrs sitting on our behinds (plus 4hrs driving), ‘calories in’ definiely exceeded ‘calories out’! The biggest problem was toilet breaks. We’d parked our car strategically to provide some cover, but there was always someone inconveniently walking the course at the wrong moment! Sadly the portaloos were just too far away.
Would I do it again? Definitely – I am already feeling the guilt creeping up on me again. I’m still not sure I’d fancy a day of 200+ BE90 competitors, but on the other hand it might well be educational and it might be a good place to start judging combinations and trickier fences. I’d recommend emailing the event organiser and offering your help. The is also a BE Volunteers register and Facebook group. Some events look after their helpers better than others so you can always check out the feedback first. Often there’s something useful such as free XC schooling vouchers on offer. Most are very good indeed at keeping you fed and watered!
My top tips are – make like a Scout and Be Prepared. Take clothes for all weathers. Lots of them. Take sunscreen, water and loo rolls! Take a couple of picnic chairs and some rugs and rock the ‘OAP on Filey sea-front’ look. Take a camera and a book for boring moments between classes, or for when there’s a long hold somewhere else on course. And most of all take someone whose company won’t grate after 8 long, slow hours!
