Nzequestrian.org.nz - Full Article
By Natasha Guest
December 11 2014
North Island Championships – Team Challenge
Becoming a regular feature on the North Island Endurance calendar is the annual Team Event. Sponsored by Equibrew, the 2015 challenge is open to all riders competing at the North Island Endurance Championships held in the beautiful Wairarapa.
Teams aim to complete a total of 500kms and are awarded points for distance travelled as well as for placing’s. And it’s not all the top level riders that are necessarily the winners. More points are awarded for distance over placing’s, and a qualification will earn your team 1 point for every 10 kilometres qualified over. A vet out will earn your team 0 points. Last season’s winner, the “Ruahine Club -Smith family” won by a margin of just 7 points. With Second place going to “Auckland-Woodhill club” and “Ruahine club - Ruahine Gang”, in both teams a vet-out had caused both teams to fail to be awarded the necessary points which would have seen them over take the winning team.
The team event was the brain child of the Waitomo Endurance Club after they hosted the 2014 Championships. It was designed as an inter-club challenge with the intention to create comradery amongst clubs, with each club putting forward as many teams as they wished. This year however, the club angle has been dropped so that every rider gets a chance to be part of a team. The only rules are that members must have a team name and a team captain (not necessarily a rider), horse and rider combinations can only compete in one team and a team’s pre-ride kilometres cannot ad up to more than 550km...
Read more here:
http://www.nzequestrian.org.nz/endurance/news/2014/december/team-competition-at-north-island-champs/