It was billed as an exercise in team building by Land Rover, official vehicle supplier to the British Three-Day Event team. But having won seven consecutive European gold medals, the team look pretty structurally sound to this observer. Instead their 'Land Rover Experience' at Eastnor Castle in the Malvern Hills was more of a celebration of yet another title.
Land Rover provide a Discovery 3 to each member of the British eventing squad. It is a fair bet that apart from forwards and backwards, most of them have yet to engage any of the vehicle's extra 'terrain responses': grass, gravel and snow, mud and ruts, sand, rocks or hill descent control. The specialist gear for the King's Road, apparently, has yet to be invented.
So there was an ulterior motive from Land Rover's point of view. The team may be good at getting the best out of their horses but a bit of experience off-road would not go amiss.
The two most difficult tasks facing the eventers, who were divided into four teams of two, were the horsebox challenge — reversing a trailer round a course — and 'blinkered', where the driver was blindfolded and took instruction from their team-mate, who was meant to guide the driver round a course — down a staircase in a wood.
It was on the latter that Zara Phillips had a coming together with a poor innocent oak tree which has stood in the 5,000-acre estate unbothered by humanity for the duration of its life. It possibly goes against the ethos of team building when your team-mate drives you into a tree but the friendship of Phillips and Daisy Dick, her guide, seemed none the worse for taking out two panels on their £37,000 Discovery. With two doors to repair it might have been a good team building exercise for Land Rover's panel-beaters.
''It was my fault and I wasn't even driving," exclaimed Dick, examining the damage.
''It's the most horrible feeling driving without being able to see where you're going," said Phillips. "I felt sick."
The teenage Georgina Spence, a potential 2012 Olympian, had trouble with the trailer although the art came back to William Fox-Pitt, with whom she was paired. She has not long passed her driving test, had never driven an automatic nor reversed a trailer. "I don't know why anyone would want to reverse a trailer," she said, wipers and indicators going, again. "Just get a horsebox."
Zara's article in today's DT is here as well: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2007/09/28/sozara128.xml
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Daisy & Zara better not give up their day jobs
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