Heath Ryan wins CCI3*at Sydney 3DE

Heath Ryan wins CCI3*at Sydney 3DE

by Nicola Turner, Equestrian Australia, Sunday, 29 August 2010


Heath Ryan and Mystery Whisper CCI3* winners
2010 Sydney 3DE - Show Jumping Day
Photograph:Franz Venhaus

He's won it again.

Heath Ryan and Mystery Whisper won the Equestrian NSW CCI3* at Sydney International Three-Day Event for the second time in three years. Heath, from Heatherbrae in NSW, and his own ten-year-old gelding Mystery Whisper (Richmeed Medallion) won this class in 2008 and were thrilled to reclaim the title at the Sydney International Equestrian Centre over the weekend.

Dressage
Heath is a master of this phase and took the lead convincingly with a score of 45.6 penalties. Christopher Burton and Alex Townsend’s eight-year-old Carbine gelding Jaybee Calypso were tied for second with New Zealand’s John Twoomey and Flaunt It on 51.7.

Cross-Country
Heath narrowly retained his lead after cross-country. Not known as a fast combination Heath was under pressure to make a good time. Adding just 6.8 time faults he managed to retain the lead but reduced his advantage to 4.5 penalties.

Christopher Burton fell victim to the troublesome complex at the second water jump, where three stops eliminated him from the competition. In all five combinations picked up faults at that jump.
John Twoomey jumped clear with 5.2 time faults to stay in second place.

Jumping
A testing course by Mark Atkins resulted in an exciting finish. There were no clear rounds from the eleven combinations in the class.
John Twoomey and Flaunt It knocked one rail which gave Heath two rails in hand and a little more breathing room. But when Heath knocked down the first fence the pressure was back on in a big way.

Heath managed to hold it together for the rest of the round, until the last fence. Heath admitted to relaxing to the last obstacle knowing that all bar time faults he had it the competition won. This may have been the reason Mystery Whisper had the final fence down, but nevertheless Heath had his CCI3* victory by 0.5 penalties.
In second place was John Twoomey. John and his wife Caroline have come to Australia to compete and qualify his two horses for Adelaide CCI4*. John’s second horse Highly Recommended was withdrawn at the final horse inspection.
Megan Jones and Kirby Park Allofoasudden finished third after a four-fault round moved them up from 5th. Finishing fourth was Natalie Blundell and Algebra.

Other Highlights
The event also ran a WEG “confirmation of fitness” class which was an unofficial practise for the combinations in contention for the 2010 World Equestrian Games. These riders did the CCI4* Dressage test, a slightly modified version of the CCI3* cross-country course and show jumped over a more difficult track than the CCI3*. Sunday’s crowd was treated to some very sophisticated clear rounds from this class and we look forward to the announcement of the Eventing team this week.
Keira Byrnes won the Tarraleah Park CCI2* on her own Fox Hill. Christopher Burton won the Harbour IT CCI1* on Tina Stafford’s Kinnordy Rivaldo. Niki Chapmanwon theOver the Top Equipment Pre-Novice class on Wisteria Lane. Annabelle Armstrong won the Tyre Feed Bins Preliminary class on Molly.

In an action packed four days of competition the spectators were also treated to displays of Carriage Driving, Vaulting, Reining, Para-Equestrian and Grand Prix Dressage as well as a dog agility competition. Celebrating ten years since the 2000 Olympic Games which were held at the same venue, 2000 Olympic Eventing Team Gold medal winning horse Jeepster, now 23 years of age, made an appearance with his owner Stuart Tinney and proved very popular with the crowd.

Quotes
Heath Ryan
“After knocking number one it seemed like the longest jumping course in history. I thought is this course ever going to end?”

“I think this is the best Horse in Australia and I am just so happy that he has won this and he gets the recognition he deserves and that I haven’t stuffed him up so much he can’t win!”

“I thought ‘I think I’ve got it’, and I let him canter down the last fence a bit open, and we fairly clobbered it, but it didn’t matter we still finished on top, just!”

John Twoomey
We bought Flaunt It as a 5-year-old, for my wife to ride as a Dressage horse. He was really hot, and tricky. It has been seven years in the making to get him to this point. Now I feel like I can go to Adelaide four-star and really have a decent go at it, I am thrilled with him.”

“My wife and I are staying at Stuart and Karen Tinney’s which has been great. We are loving our time in Australia. This event has been awesome, I was worried about the ground being so hard in Australia but the committee has worked really hard to improve the going and it was great. The whole event has been fantastic.”
Keira Byrnes CCI2* winner

“I have had Fox for five years, he is totally amazing. I was winning the CCI2* after the Dressage two years ago and I completely stuffed it up on the cross-country and had a run out. This time we got it right – or at least Fox did. He is the best horse!”
Lina Arto-Hardy Indonesian Team Manager, The Indonesian Team had 3 riders finish in the top 10 of the CCI 1*

“We are very pleased. The horses went very well. We are glad that we now have 3 team members qualified for the Asian Games, and just one more to qualify who was not riding here.”

Wayne Roycroft (National Eventing Head Coach)
“I think we have the makings of a very strong team for WEG. The event was fantastic and it showed us areas that we can certainly make improvements on. The team will be more formalised in the next few days as we have to do the rigorous vetting. If anything worries me more than anything it is the enormous trip these horses have to do to go to Lexington. The whole trip will probably take 35 hours. They will be effectively five days in transit. That worries me. The handling of that has to be really good. I am confident that all the horse are fit enough to do it, but like always we seem to be at a slight disadvantage because of where we live. We have a good mix of riders, and some experienced riders and hopefully we can come back with a really good medal and make sure we qualify for the London Olympics."

Debbie Lee (Tarraleah Park, sponsors of the CCI2*)
We are thrilled Keira, she has ridden beautifully this weekend. She won the Dressage; she was closest to the optimum time on cross-country and a clear show jumping round. She is a very hard working girl and she deserves it so we are thrilled for her.”

Results
CCI3*
Place Horse Rider Score
1 Mystery Whisper Heath Ryan 60.40
2 Flaunt It John Twoomey (NZL) 60.90
3 Kirby Park Allofasudden Megan Jones 68.00
4 Algebra Natalie Blundell 73.00
5 Mighty High Eleanor Osborne 76.4


CCI2*
Place Horse Rider Score
1 Fox Hill Keira Byrnes 52.50
2 BP Gallantry Katja Weimann 54.80
3 Wendela Jamie Prue Barrett 55.00
4 Sandhills Brillaire Craig Barrett 55.70
5 GV Billy Elliot Tim Boland 55.71


CCI1*
Place Horse Rider Score
1 Kinnordy Rivaldo Christopher Burton 51.20
2 Statford Neo Shane Rose 53.30
3 My Belissimo Judith Clarke 54.20
4 Aswatama Sportzgirl Yan Yan Hadiansah (INA) 54.30
5 Aswatama Davine Story Ferry Wahyu Hadiyanto (INA) 54.50


[COLOR=windowtext]For full results see [URL="http://www.sydneyeventing.org/"][COLOR=windowtext]www.sydneyeventing.org[/URL]