Round Two 2013

Saturday 27^th April at the Norfolk Game and Country Fair

Dead Pigeon comes back to life!

For Round Two of the National Horseboarding Championship we headed off to the Royal Norfolk show ground for the East Anglian Game and Country Fair. It was the second largest event on the horseboarding calendar, boasting a spectatorship of a whopping 40,000!

The weekend was split into six heats, consisting of four Drag Race events and two Arena Boarding events. This article covers the exciting news from the Drag Race.

Saturday morning began with a qualifying round which gave the new teams a chance to prove they could pass the test that had now become pretty rigorous, including a sub 15 second run down the drag strip. All seven teams qualified but only five chose to enter the competition, using the qualifying round as an experience gainer for both the horses and board riders. 

So, the five teams to go through to the heat phase of the Drag Race were: Ihorse, Desinated Drinkers, Kauldren, Ambush and Dead Pigeon. But let’s take a closer look at who was racing. Ihorse, made up of boarder Daniel Fowler-Prime with new rider Leila Graves who took over from Laura White, and horse Apache. Laura chose to race her own horse, Fern, who did so well in the first round of the championship by coming third in her debut competition. Together with new boarder Chris Kirk, the trio made up the Designated Drinkers. Kauldren, with the combination of Bre Buss riding Jack, plus the current National Board Riding Champion, Tom Kilroy, were always going to be a formidable team in this competition, carrying the confidence that last year, even in such terrible weather, managed to secure them a first on this ground. The new team Ambush starred the Extreme Demo Team’s horse Batman, with rider Kirsty and Allen Hare on the board. Allen, who originally arrived with Bucks Fizz and Norfolk ‘n’ Good, had been press-ganged into Ambush when his other two teams chose not to run their horses in the Drag Race competition and decided instead to save them for the Arena Boarding. Of course the big news of the day was that the current National Team Champion, Dead Pigeon, was back and, despite being seen practising with a mystery horse a couple of weeks earlier, their team line-up included last year’s champion horse Nabo.

With a specially prepared drag strip, good ground conditions and good weather conditions the scene was set for some epic racing. Throughout the heat phases of both days there was pedigree-like behaviour shown by the Kauldren and Dead Pigeon with both teams getting near perfect starts and extremely fast times. In short, they dominated the round.

Ihorse struggled as Apache, Dan and Leila tried to find a happy medium in the start box. There was marked improvement from last year’s drag racing as they were able to bite at the heels of the more experienced teams and beat new comers like the Designated Drinkers. The Drinkers themselves showed reasonable consistency out of the start box, despite the fact that team boarder Chris Kirk had only been riding for about a month.

New team Ambush with horse Batman at the core set a steady consistent performance. Boarder Allan Hare, who had been personally trained by two-time National Champion Daniel Fowler-Prime, struggled with the rigors of Horseboarding at this level. As a team, the start box needed work but this can only come through experience because of the race being such a highly pressurised environment. That being said, Allen put in a resilient effort taking a lot of hits on the start line and a few heavy falls on the strip itself. Unfortunately, on the second day, a lower leg strain caused by the crashes on day one saw Allen under the first aiders and out of the drag strip just before the knock-out phase began. 

So after the heats, Dead Pigeon drew with Designated Drinkers in the semi-finals and Ihorse drew with Kauldren. The consistency and speed of Dead Pigeon and Kauldren made them the favourites for the final but as we know, in the ‘Three Race Knock Out’, anything can happen. As it was, the semi-finals went as predicted with Kauldren and Dead Pigeon making it easily through to the final. Charlie from Dead Pigeon was obviously holding Nabo back, to save him for the final race – clearly they took the threat that Kauldren posed seriously. 

Ihorse who had changed their horse rider yet again, had trouble in the start box and at one point got confused as to where the race lane was that they tried racing down the return shoot. This was a clear sign that Apache and the team were not 100% together and after completing the semi-final they bowed out of the competition, taking fourth place and giving third to Designated Drinkers, which was another good result for the new team.

 So, as it was twelve months earlier, Dead Pigeon faced Kauldren in the final. You could feel the anticipation grow as this rematch came to its conclusion. There was nothing between them in first race, with a visual and time draw to one tenth of a second. The decision had to go to the fourth official who called Kauldren as the winners. At this point Dead Pigeon must have thought it was going to be a repeat of 2012. In the second race, however, it was a close but clear win from the Dead Pigeon and talk of sudden death started to creep across the show ground as both teams were now on three points each. Flashbacks of the 2012 Cheshire competition, where Dead Pigeon raced against Irn-Raptor which went to a ‘Five Race Sudden Death’ stand off before Irn-Raptor eventually won, were recounted as Kauldren and Dead Pigeon took to the start box one last time in the final race.

The crowd fell silent as all focused on the start line and judge, Laura Adair, gave the go. With an outstanding start from Dead Pigeon and a little stall from Kaudren, the race was over about ten yards from the start line. All Ross Towner had to do was hold on tight and not fall off as his team left Kauldren behind and romped home to seal the deal. Dead Pigeon truly made their mark on the championship in a bid to defend their title as the Horseboarding National Champions and gained 6 points to add to their current 1 from the previous competition.

Kauldren's Rider Bre Buss had this to say:  “We just had a small judgement error in the start box. They got out quicker than we did and it was all over.” Unfortunately for Kaudren, at this level in the final of the drag race, the margin for error is so slight. A team must work in unison for 9 seconds or less without mistake to stand a chance of winning.

Dead Pigeon must have felt that they really put some demons to bed with their win because even though we did see the team win last year, it was not as a whole. This was due to board rider Ross Towner’s knee injury keeping him out for most of the season. And then of course this year, there have been all those rumours about discord within the team because of pictures of them training with a mystery horse, and then there was Nabo’s failed appearance at Round One, leaving the team in sixth place.

All this, however, fell entirely away as they celebrated their much-needed win. But the cherry on top of this cream-filled cake of horseboarding goodness, was that during the heat phase, Dead Pigeon broke their own speed record of 37.1mph set in 2011, and set a new National Championship record of 37.7mph over the 100 meters, making a clear statement that they were back and were going to fight for the championship as the fastest team in the country.