Captain Phillips tips rivalry boost

Press, 22 October 1986, Page 44

Captain Phillips tips rivalry boost

PA Wellington New Zealand’s arrival as a force to be reckoned with in international horse trials will increase healthy competition within the sport here, according to Captain Mark Phillips, in New Zealand to conduct a series of eventing clinics. “The British and the Americans have been the favourites for a long time but the best thing that could possibly happen would be if someone came along and knocked them off,” Captain Phillips said during a stopover in Wellington. He said a great deal would depend on progress up to the Seoul Olympics; whether the same horses and riders were still fit and running New Zealand had been unlucky not to win the world championships this year but most of the world felt they were moral victors, he said. The Kiwis were thwarted at Gawler when Tinks Porringer's elimination robbed them of individual and team gold medals. Captain Phillips, a Munich Olympic team gold medallist and four-time Badminton winner, has had his own share of disappointments during an eventing career which began in 1966. In 1974, he and the Queen's horse, Columbus, led the world championship field after the speed and endurance phase but Columbus injured a hock tendon and could not come forward on the final day. More recently. Captain Phillips has been forced to miss three big three-day events because of injured and ill horses. Captain Phillips first taught in New Zealand in 1983 and his Bell Tea clinics this year have been restricted to 12 riders of a high standard. Having only conducted one clinic, at Feilding, since his arrival this time, he said it was difficult to form an overall assessment of New Zealand progress but “the 12 I had at Feilding was the highest standard of clinic I’ve had since I've been coming out here.” His role in working with the world championship riders, Tinks Pottinger and Andrew Scott, at Feilding, took teaching on to a different plane and was very much “a fine-tuning operation."