Up, Up and Away to WEG

Living on an island continent, hundreds of miles from other major equestrian centres of the world, Australia's top horses are no strangers to flying long distances. In fact several would have notched up quite a few frequent flyer miles, if they were applicable for horses! In addition to the competiton horses, as well known exporters of quality Thoroughbreds, endurance Arabians, Australian Stock Horse polos ponies and the recent Youth Olympic Games showjumping team of equines, our horses are certainly familiar with jetting across the globe. Australia's latest flying horses are the elite steeds who will be competing at the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games.

Our horses are amongst the 500 to 600 horses travelling to Kentucky in specially built in-plane stalls. The skies are full of flying horses! Wide-bodied Fed Ex jets, each holding 50 horses from European and Middle Eastern countries, took off from Belgium's Liege Airport for the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport yesterday. South American horses will go through Miami, and Pan-Asian horses (our Aussie equines are included in this lot) through California first, before moving on to the Bluegrass.


The great migration already has begun. Some horses from Chile and Guatemala have passed their quarantine and are now at the Kentucky Horse Park. Many more started arriving in Northern Kentucky yesterday, where they will undertake quarantine before travelling to Lexington.

21 horses from Australia and Japan arrived in Ontario, California, on Monday with twelve flying grooms accompanying the horses. Each of the grooms — three with the Japanese team, four with the Australian horses and five from Peden Bloodstock, the official transport agent for the WEG travelled with the horses to monitor their well being during the 14 hour flight. All rode in a fuselage cooled to the mid-50s. "The horses love it," says Greg Otteson, sales manager for Tex Sutton, the transport agent for the firm that transported the Australasian horses to Kentucky, after their 48-hour quarantine in Southern California. "Horses put out a lot of body heat, and the coolness keeps the bacterial count down."

"Each move is also a study in speed", said Martin Atock, managing director of Peden, which has handled equestrian transport for the past four Summer Olympics and all of the World Equestrian Games since their inception in 1990.

Not every competitor in the Games brought his or her own horse. Due to the huge distance to travel and expense, the Australian vaulting team opted to go to Tennessee on 2 September and train on the horses they will use for the Games, instead of paying to bring their five Percheron/Thoroughbred mixes with them.

Joanie Morris, director of communications for the United States Equestrian Federation, said vaulting and para-dressage are the only two disciplines that may use horses in competition on which riders did not qualify. "Due to rules of the other disciplines, horse and rider combinations qualify together," said Morris. "It's the partnership that earns the certification."