Greenwich - Awash With Challenges

Hyde Park | More Suitable

It's no secret that the ticketing policy for London 2012 has been wholly unpopular, across all the sporting disciplines, and I have previously expressed my opinion that the venue chosen for the eventing, Greenwich Park, is unsuitable due to the pint-size nature of the venue and therefore it's ability to satisfy anywhere near the demand there would be for the event.

Pippa Cuckson recently blogged about the ticketing allocations for the equestrian events, noting some half a million people expressed interest in the tickets for the horsey olympics. I've also just listened to a very interesting interview on the Eventing Radio Show with Sue Benson, the London 2012 course designer, who throughout the interview describes almost every part of her job relating the Greenwich venue as 'a challenge'. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the LOCOG PR office when that interview gets mentioned in internal dispatches.

Fences 19-20: Keep It Together

Back to my Hyde Park Cross Country Course now with Fences 19 & 20, and the theme here is "dry dock". London sits on the river Thames, which is a tidal river, and home to the famous Cutty Sark (that's in dry dock).

Here we have a relatively simple combination, nothing to physically testing or mentally taxing. It's just a question of 'can you still keep it together'? How straightforward or physically demanding this combination is to ride is all down to how you use the angles to your advantage. It's all about the angles!

London 2012: Fence 6: Big & Bold

I Said 'Hedge' Not 'Hedgehog'

Now it can't all be technical and about the corners and angles. Sometimes you just need a ruddy great big fence in front of you to get the blood up, and get you and the horse in the mood for the rest of the course.

So without further ado....

London 2012: Cross Country Course - Peter Pan Pirate Ships

PETER PAN

Did you know there's a Peter Pan statue in Hyde Park (or rather Kensington Gardens to be precise), and apparently there's quite a tie-up with Hyde Park in the origins of this novel. 'Legend' has it Peter Pan sailed on an old birds nest across the serpentine escaping the small island there.

This is such a lovely setting, and the perfect opportunity to have a "let's slow them up" fence before the first water and early on the course, that I thought it might be fun to introduce 2 corners in the form of some pirate ships, and I was given some external inspiration for which I'm very grateful.

Let's take a look at the fences....

London 2012: Cross Country Course - The Reformers' Tree

I just love big trees, there's something majestic about a living thing that has been around for centuries, sometimes millennia. Here's one of my favourite old trees that I pass everyday, and before you start thinking "he's off his trolley and become a tree hugging hippie", it this tree that has proved, in part, the inspiration for this next fence, due to the 'boxed in' root base it has.

One of the great things about using Hyde Park as the venue is there is just so much history surrounding this patch of ground from which to draw inspiration. Amongst other things, Britain is famous for it's democratic style of government, and freedom of speech. Hyde Park is actually where much of this was born, illustrated so well by Speakers' Corner and The Reformers' Tree.

Fence 18 is sited where this famous tree once stood, the meeting point for many demonstrations and marches. The tree itself was burnt down in 1866 by people campaigning for the right to vote after they were banned from holding a meeting in the park. The stump of the tree continued to serve as the meeting point for protests, rallies and all manner of gatherings for years to come.  Let's take a look at the fence:

London 2012: Cross Country Course - Hyde Park Course Map

Hyde Park | The London Alternative

If you've been following my posts, you'll know that Greenwich Park isn't my preferred location for holding the London 2012 Olympic 3 Day Event. Whilst I believe Windsor Great Park is the most suitable location, I really like the idea of holding the event in the centre of London, and Hyde Park I think provides a very popular location, it's a real "peoples' park", where numerous outdoor events are held each year, from demonstrations to 'Proms In The Park'. In case you are interested in the history of the park, rather than regurgitate anything, here's the park's wikipedia entry.  I have some fond memories of walking through the park from Chelsea to Mayfair on my way to work some years ago, during the summer months and watching the cavalry horses out on exercise.

It's a very interesting challenge for the cross country course designer. As the "Volunteer Course Designer" let me walk you through my cross country course. Whilst I haven't finished all of the fences, the majority of significant fences are now fleshed out and the track is pretty much fixed. I am still in two minds as to where to put the main area, over by Park Lane out of the way or between Fences 8 & 9. If it goes over by fence 8 I can foresee some great hospitality opportunities, with private boxes that over look fence 8 and few others, plus the arena.

London 2012: Cross Country Course - The Airport

London has two of the busiest airports in the world, Heathrow & Gatwick. Heathrow apparently handles more international travellers than any other airport, you only have to drive down the M4 motorway, glance up and you will see at least one aircraft coming in any another leaving.

Gatwick claims to have the busiest single runway in the world, and that's not hard to believe since many of the budget airlines hop over to Europe from here. My airport themed fence is pretty straight forward really, a 2 part fence complex with minimum difficulty.

London 2012: Cross Country Course - The Maze

Hampton Court Maze

Just in case you thought we weren't going to see a more tradition hedge, here's one of the most famous hedges of all. The UK and in particular, London, is a huge draw for tourism, the vast majority of which revolves around the British Monarchy. Probably the most famous of the monarchs is Henry VIII who's favourite haunt was Hampton Court Palace in West London, home to probably the most famous maze "in the world". So with this in mind and taking in to consideration mazes are designed to be confusing, here's the next next installment in my 'Volunteer Course Design Portfolio'.

London 2012: Cross Country Course - Busy On The Underground

One of the fastest ways to get around London, is obviously 'the tube', it's also one of the busiest, so I could think of no better way to portrait this than to use an underground train (which often appear above ground) as a 'let up' fence that allows the rider to gallop on their way around the course, and provides spectators with the perfect method of getting across the course without having to wait for a horse to go by.

London 2012: Cross Country Course - The Olympic Cascade

As this is the Olympics and I'm a volunteer, I have no budgetary restraints, and this fence will require a fair bit of ground work but will provide a legacy feature for the park post games. The majority of water complexes used on 3 day event courses tend to be still ponds or lakes, and most jumping elements are reworked themes, with slight variations. One of the interesting uses of water I have seen, was at the Punchestown 2003 Europeans, where aqueducts were used, sadly only for decoration, the other water fences were quite spectacular as well and did cause one or two problems.

London 2012: Cross Country Course - London Bridge Is Falling Down

London Bridge | Arizona

London, like most European cities, is built on a major river estuary, and therefore has plenty of bridges. One of the most famous of these bridges is London Bridge, and Yes, this time I do mean the one we sold to the Americans for their desert retreat, and it's predecessor, immortalised in the nursery rhyme. Anyone who knows London will have heard "London Bridge is falling down, falling down...." .

The concept of the broken/unfinished bridge is not new, and I have to say, is one of my favourites to jump, as they can be a bit "jump into mid air" if constructed properly, providing a real "yippee" moment. A first glance of my diagram and you're probably thinking "that's pretty straightforward", well yes and no.

London 2012: Cross Country Course - The Apiary Fences

Bees | Scary Stuff

Your first thought is probably "What the hell have Bee Hives got to do with London or a cross country course"? Well, let me explain. London has thousand upon thousand beekeepers, and produces some of the best honey in the country, the other good place for honey production being, the Highlands of Scotland. The success of bee keeping in London is down to the huge variety of flowers, and lack of pesticides.

Robin Pemberton-Jones, a former governor of the Bank of England, kept hives on top of the Bank, and many of the other best know London landmarks host bee hives too. OK, enough of the reasoning, let's take a look at the fence complex.

London 2012: Making It "As Good As It Gets"

NZB Land Vision | London 2012 Aim

With the eventing season drawing to a close, and the curtains firmly drawn on the World Equestrian Games stage, the next 'really big' competition to look forward is the London 2012 Olympics, so I thought I'd start a series of posts about the event. In particular I wanted to talk about the cross country course and the venue. So first of all, the cross country course.

Now, we're constantly reminded that this is a sport built on the foundations of the volunteer workforce, after all our big 3-Day Events just wouldn't run without the thousands of volunteers who sacrifice their time to man everything from the car parks to the media centre. With this in mind I have decided to volunteer to design the cross country course - what a good samaritan I am, and Sue Benson (the official course designer) is of course welcome to have some input, and borrow my ideas.

Every cross country course needs a theme, and there are of course two obvious themes; London itself and GBR - spiritual home of the 3 day event, so these will be my inspiration for my London 2012 Olympic Course. To begin with I will share fence, and fence combination ideas, and then once I've discussed the venue in more detail I'll start to layout the course a little more. The reason for this will become apparent as I reveal more about the venue.