Showcase: North Otago A&P Association – 26-27 February 2022
Showcase: North Otago A&P Association – 26-27 February 2022
If you were going to give one word to describe what the showing year for the 2021/22 season has been then I think you could easily call it “Disaster”. It was with that in mind that North Otago A&P decided that they wanted to run the equestrian and school sections even amidst the COVID numbers climbing steadily. Could we do it safely following all the government guidelines and still run an event effectively? Would the benefits out way the risks? Could we, do it?
The next question was could we run sections? Some areas of the show committee decided they did not want to run but the equestrian and school sections said yes let’s do it. Having grounds that are completely enclosed in and able to control entry made the decision making easier as well. With judges already on board we checked that they would be happy to continue with judging as an equestrian show only. I asked them what their comfort level was with COVID, the idea at the time was that if the cases got into the thousands for Waitaki then we would cancel. All the judges were happy to be part of the event.
These were all questions that we were asking ourselves leading up to our show at the end of February. We had decided earlier on that we would wait to see how COVID progressed before making a call about the show with public. That decision was made for us when we moved into the red traffic light, you could not run a show with public.
We are not a big committee, and the majority are not of the younger generation so to be able to pull off a successful equestrian and school event was incredible and I am really grateful that I get to work with some amazing people who like myself are very passionate about North Otago A&P. We are all looking forward now to our 160th show on the 25th February 2023.
Show Day itself ran well and the feedback was incredibly positive. We ran slightly behind in getting the hunter jumping started but apart from that there were no timetable issues. We are incredibly grateful for our main equestrian sponsor Oamaru Funeral Services and all our other sponsors that supported us. Our school section ran the following week with photos of all our winners being posted on our Facebook page. We had 1300 entries which was down on the previous year of 2000, but still surprisingly good considering people were not able to come in and see their exhibits and we had cut the baking and floral sections. We also saw that our home school participants also decreased compared to other years. Thanks must go to our amazing convenors and committee members that made this happen and of course our main school sponsor Office Products Depot.
We had some formidable volunteers and members of our committee committed to the entrance gates and they checked vaccine passes, checked them off the already prepared lists and gave them coloured wristbands to wear for the duration of the event. All the competitors were grateful that they had a competition to compete in and were patient and understanding with the procedures. Those that were only show jumping on Sunday sent their vaccine certs in, so I had them on file. People arrived on Friday night also and the check in process was the same as Saturday morning and again I had some awesome volunteers doing those duties. Our yards and stables had sold out by the 2 nd of Feb, so we used the racecourse for the overflow on Friday and Saturday nights.
Leading up to the show on the Wednesday before the event I had a phone call that one of the judges was a close contact and had to isolate and therefore could not attend. Nothing like a bit of pressure to find someone else but we did and the planning continued. The next steps were working out the bubbles and keeping to under 100 in a defined space. With entries coming from as far as Gore, Wanaka, and Rangiora we had to be making sure that we did this right. We had just on 200 horses entered over the two days which for us was a 50% increase on previous years. With more room for parking, we were able to have three bubbles spread around the grounds.
Katrina Kelly – Secretary