9 days to go . (Monday 17th January)

Today I made it to the site of the greatest equestrian show on earth this year, The World Endurance Championships.

Hearing stories about the grand and visionary scale gives one little preparation for the harsh landscape , and the miracles of built environment rising from the sand like some grand behemoth.

It may well be the greatest endurance race in history.

We decorated our stable today with flags and our team banner . A rummaging trip with chief scrounger and Crew boss Murray Peal produced a long pole from which our national flag and our boxing kangaroo flag now fly grandly.

The horses, grooms and riders are all settled and preparing for the challenge.
McLeod was seen out and about on the training loop. With Amy Daw in charge, the horse looked quite magnificent.

The Bab el Shams resort, reportedly built from the ground up in eight weeks is a six star oasis of grandeur in a sea of sand. This is the team and officials accommodation venue for the event.The crew are all happily camped in a tourist hotel in Dubai , and trucking out each day to provide support .

This afternoon, Peter Toft took Murray and a few daring adventurers on a tour of the loops likely to be incorporated in the championship course. It was quite an eye opener to experience the reality of the high speed desert driving necessary to provide support for the horses. Preparation for this part of the race is a serious challenge , and much of the next week will be spent in rehearsing "pass the bottle" , "get the bottle back" and "get back in the car ".(without being run down by the other several hundred Land Cruisers trying to do the same thing).

I was quite surprised by the concussive nature of much of the course, even the better going is often littered with broken rock pieces . The course is no picnic, and far more demanding in terrain terms than my Aussie concept of the desert had imagined. Noosa North Shore beach it certainly is not.

Crew and officials are trickling in each day and we are looking forward to the coming challenge with much anticipation.

Crew Manager Murray Peal Peter Toft and Paul Monger discuss desert crewing

7 days to go . (Thursday 20th January)

And it's raining…Training is off and horses and crew are confined to barracks..what a bummer!

Lot's of new faces about as we build our team . Some abandoned at the airport , some bedless and some roomless.. such are the vagaries of life in the UAE.. saying that it will be means it isn't necessarily so. Lots more teams about , and the lunchroom is a sea of International faces in which the Aussie green and gold stands out like a beacon.

I haven't seen a lot of the International horses in work, as we have separated training areas, although a few that I have seen don't look like "typical" endurance horses. Race day should be very interesting indeed. There will be a spectacular opening ceremony choreographed by an Australian, Tony Jablonski, who played a major role in the Opening and closing ceremonies for the 2000 Sydney Olympic games. There have been teams of workers building a huge seating scaffold right across the vetgate entrance, and hundreds of light towers and poles with theatre lighting are growing like grass after a shower of rain.

Peter Toft says that the whole first leg will be floodlit…I'm inclined to believe him after watching the changes that have been happening over the past few days. A bare area of sand in front of the main event complex , has morphed into a bitumen car park in three days.

Whooppeee … .. the rain has cleared at ride base , and we are off to work. Light work for the horses today ,with some crew training . A solid hit out tomorrow, where the crew will have a good rehearsal for the main event.

Light work and Crew Training

5 days to go. (Sunday 23 Jan 2005)

The excitement is building. Almost all the crew and team are now on site.

This morning we arrived to the sight of a nice big tent at our stable depot. The tent has a floor and even some carpet pieces and a few tables .. luxury indeed. Having scrounged some chairs , we had been working on acquiring a large poly tarp and scrounging some more timber for poles.. a sort of native aussie donga was in the making. . There seem to be Aussies everywhere, and the kiwi's were amazed that almost everyone had paid their own way. They reportedly received enough funding from government and private sponsors to fund most of their team. ( are you listening johnnie???)

Horse news is all good , they had a good run on Friday and are all well and raring to go. Crew training is more settled as everyone gets a bit of practice. Murray reports a fewcomments , like .. gee it's not as easy as it looks. Peter has high standards , knows how he wants it done , and the crew are training their butts off to be the best desert crew ever.

Many aspects of the event preparation appear chaotic to my eyes. We wasted much of yesterday attempting to get our media accreditation, it didn't happen, and just in time completions seem to be the arab way.

The preparations for the opening ceremony continue, and it seems that it will be really something special.

There isn't really a lot more to tell, it's Sunday morning as I finish this . Most of the crew have gone to Abu Dhabi to watch the 120k youth ride , and they are then going out to ride base for a short afternoon crewing session with the horses.

It's not all work , after training yesterday many of the crew went to Wild Wadi. Alexandra Toft, seldom seen without her Brisbane Lions uniform, invited everyone along. It's the largest water park in the world, and if everyone had half as good a time as Luke Annetts , they all had a ball .

Most nights, those of us without social engagements have eaten out together. Last night , guided by team masseur Richard, we all walked down through the bur Dubai souks and caught an abra across the creek to the gold souk area. While everyone vacillated about finding a restaurant a lady well nick-named "madam lash" decided that this was the one. Remembering a very colourful description about the way Murray disposed of his previous nights Indian meal , I was a bit concerned , but the boss was already inside and sitting down. The meal was fine and herb remains uncalled for.

And so we are into the final few days , and it's a little like the calm before the storm. Team selection is perhaps the next major hurdle , and I sure wouldn't want that responsibility. If I was to believe some of the speculation (I don't) there are big calls to be made here.

Mostly chatter in this report , will try to find some more meat for the next one ..

Cheers
Mal Caldwell