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DOHA When we said to our friends we were going to Doha, people would reply, “where’s Doha, never heard of it, sure you don’t mean Dubai?”, we must admit we had to do a google search when we first heard mention of the capital of Qatar, a small country on the edge of the Gulf. Back in 2005 David Atkins contacted us and asked us if we could put a horse up a ramp. The reply was, “yea sure”, but this was no ordinary ramp it was from the floor of the stadium to the roof, 60 metres long and 26 degrees. It had never been done before but Steve was willing to give it a try. David added, “there’s more – the rider has to carry a torch up the ramp and light the cauldron which will tower above them”, “ok” was the reply, “and the rider will be the Prince, third son of the Emir” Well…… now it was sounding difficult. How capable was the rider, Steve was confident he could do it, but was the Prince accomplished enough to pull off such a stunt in front of a crowd of 45,000 people? Work began back in December 2005 to find 3 suitable pure Arabian horses to train, 2 would be exported and one would remain back in Australia. The 3 we finally chose were all very different. Riveroak Malibu (Mal) and Satisfaction (Ace) were our final ‘Hero Horse’ selection, after being tested on the 26 degrees and practiced and tuned to total fitness for 8 months they were finally loaded onto a plane at Sydney airport in September 10 and arrived in Doha 17 hours later. Coming from an Australian winter into summer in Doha – 50 Degrees plus- was a bit of a culture shock, they lived in purpose built stables with massive air conditioners to make them comfortable, spending their days inside and evenings outside. Our first set back happened only days after arriving when Ace tyed up and it meant drips and numerous tests to get him back on track. The Hero rider was Sheik Mohammed Bin Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, the captain of the Qatar Endurance team. At first Steve would take the horses to Al Shaqab, the royal stables, and work with Sheik Mohammed there. In the meantime 3 practice hills were being built in the desert. One important thing we learnt in this country was every thing happens slowly, the local saying is “Inshalla” meaning “if god wills it” and we heard this saying a lot! The three ramps were of varying degrees, the first a slope of 14 degrees, then 22 degrees and the third was the actual 26 degrees, same degree as would be ridden on the night of the opening ceremony. Sh. Mohammed was a good keen learner and quickly got the hang of the new riding position, which at first was very foreign to him. Steve was impressed with his ability to learn. The slope of the hill meant that Steve had to come up with the most suitable saddle that would allow the rider freedom to get up over the horse’s shoulder and allow the legs to go back for balance, after trying everything it was decided that a dressage saddle would allow the rider to do just this whilst not interfering with the action of the horse. The rider’s legs were so far back down the horses sides it meant that the stirrup leathers had to be anchored to prevent them sliding off the bars. The saddle had to be secured by a breastplate to stop it sliding off the horses back. Practice happened on the hills every night until the stadium was completed. There were two ramps at the stadium, a shorter one up onto a central stage then a long run up another ramp to the platform at the top where the cauldron would move past. Initially the smaller ramp was our only access so the horses would run up to the stage and be brought back down in a specially designed flying box, which was operated on the end of a crane. The inaugural ride up the whole ramp was an anxious, tense moment where David and all his executives held their breath for 14 seconds, even though the horses had practice on this degree a number of times, the length had not been tried until now. From the ground it seemed like it took forever to get to the top! A huge roar of approval went up when they scampered to the top. After this each horse had another two runs and then from then on in practice would some times run up the same ramp up to 6 times. Towards the end both horses were extremely fit As well as training for the ramp, we had a 74 horse complex where we had a full size 1 to 1 practice stadium built to train the horses and riders for the ‘Desert Horse’ segment. Training for this segment often happened 3 – 4 times a week. At times training was difficult as that word “Inshalla” kept popping up and riders failed to turn up! We were slowed down because our 1-1 was not finished and progress was slow, so it was only 3 weeks before opening night that we started practicing on it. Steve found himself running from Hero Horses to Desert Horses. Opening night finally arrives. Well it was the only day in the last 2 years that Doha really saw RAIN and it rained and rained! Our heart went out to David, after all the blood swear and tears that go into a production such as this it must have been extremely disappointing, but being the true professional he is, he ran it through to a delighted crowd. Unfortunately the wind was too strong to fly any of the big objects, so there was parts that were missed that were absolutely fabulous, it was such a shame. Our team of riders did a stirling job under very difficult conditions, the gold crown that they ride around could not fly in, so instead the crew ran in boxes to surround the 20mtr deep hole in the ground. Only problem was the boxes were bigger than the crown and impeded the lighting on the ground for the spiral movement, but with the help of in-ear communications and a great Aussie leader we got them around without anyone falling down! We had had a couple of falls in the rehearsals. The crowd went wild and it was a great moment for all the local riders. Although the rain stayed away for the show the ground conditions were still very wet. Steve decided we could still run Malibu up that ramp, he had previously tested Mal on a wet ramp for just this ‘one in a million’ problem. We had flown Ian Dix, our Aussie farrier over just to look after the 2 Hero horses, and an hour before the show he was removing nails and replacing nails with sharp heads, rasping toes in order to give him the best traction he could get. There was flitter on the ramp which we were worried about being slippery, so our boys went on an ‘emu parade’ to try and collect all of it off the ramp. By the time Sheik Mohammad was ready to go, the ramp still wasn’t dry, the wind was blowing, but not enough! We had had problems with Mal on the ‘sunstage’ a week earlier, Steve was on him and he was left on there too long and started to rear and jump around. There isn’t much room on this stage and there is no protection on the edges of the stage, if anything happened it was a 10metre drop to the floor below, a major worry especially if the prince didn’t make it to stage 1! We managed to get around this by sending one of our Aussie wranglers, Alan Wallan, with him on all his rehearsal trips, this calmed both of them down and then on the final night the wrangle stepped off and Mal and Mohammad came out of the ground looking a million dollars, Mal stood like a rock, much to our relief, as in previous training he had nervous moments on this as well, a few weeks earlier he slipped off the edge of the ramp, so he was very wary of getting off the stage. Out of the two horses, Mal was the strongest on the ramp, it was 26 degrees and he handled it easily. During training he never faltered, although he knew how long it was and would trot the last couple of steps over the lip. In early training he was good with the caldron, we had had lots of things flying over his head so this was just another flying object, the fire didn’t worry him. We knew that there was going to be fireworks coming from the cauldron, so back in Australia we had a fireworks night to get them used to it, which didn’t create any problems. Five days before the big night we rehearsed the fireworks out of the cauldron, to everyone’s surprise, what came out was a fizzing fireball that shocked the hell out of both horses, (not how we thought it would be) we rehearsed a few more times, but it wasn’t working, the fireworks weren’t as they should be, so David dropped them out. But we were now in damage control as Mal was really scarred, he was waiting for the bang to go off and wanted to run away and if he went back down that ramp it would have been disastrous! Also not good if he had to stand to light the cauldron. So we had the pyro guys out lighting ‘wicks’ at all hours of the night, the night before the big show, we did a run with the cauldron then waited 2 hours for it to cool down to be re-loaded so we could do one more run to give him the best possible chance to feel safe. So the decision as to which horse we would use was not made until the last minute, as both had their good attributes. On the night it was the conditions that were the decider, Mal was the obvious one to run the ramp, the most dangerous part. With no finger nails left we waited in anticipation for Mal to do his stuff. Steve was in the control tower speaking to Mohamad with ‘in-ears’ and Ash and Sandy were down with the horse and rider. We had our Aussie boys strategically placed, Alan and Iain Hyde in the tunnel, Troy at the sun stage, Wayne, Bruce, Marty, Ian Dix, Dustin and our vet Michael were all in locations on route to the Cauldron so they could give instant assistance if needed. They came up on the Sun stage and stood magnificently, like statues, then the runner came up and light the torch, Mal again didn’t budge (so far so good), then they followed the runner down the ramp without hesitation, and up to Salute his father the King of Qatar. Then a little trot over and prepare for the ramp. Steve was there in his ears, telling him to take his time, get organized, don’t rush, focus. Then off he went, the crowd went berserk, first stage was good……………..but half way up the second ramp Mal’s head was turning to the left, he was starting to stall, the whole crowd was screaming. By some amazing drive the horse had the heart to keep going, Steve knew that the horses couldn’t walk up the ramp, it was too steep, but Mal struggled on, loosing his footing and at one stage looking like he was going to go backwards, he again pushed forward and with the help of the cheering crowd finally got over the top! It was extremely dramatic, it wasn’t supposed to be like that, but was great theatre!!! and he went on to light the cauldron without a problem! Good horse, he is now a national treasure. Once we have settled our adrenalin from the big opening night and had a good sleep it was straight into the closing ceremony rehearsals!
Each of them brought with them their own unique skills to make an incredible team of horsemen of which we were very proud to be a part of. Thank you. | |||
