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| Equestrianism: Doctor's focus put to test |
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| By Lucinda Green (Filed: 01/05/2003) |
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| The intense professionalism of its participants, present at |
| the top end of all sport, will be no less evident at this |
| weekend's Mitsubishi Badminton Horse Trials. The genuine |
| amateur is still alive, though. Army doctor Vanessa |
| Lloyd-Davies, and the contrastingly huge Don Giovanni, |
| will make their debut in today's dressage phase at the |
| greatest horse trials in the world. |
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| The diminutive doctor fell in love with Don Giovanni six |
| years ago when he was a gangly, unkempt four-year-old. |
| They have worked their way through the grades, and last |
| September achieved Lloyd-Davies's lifelong ambition, to |
| complete Burghley, her local top-level, four-star event. |
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| Lloyd-Davies is no stranger to pressure, danger and |
| definitive focus, but does not readily impart a wealth of |
| tales of war from her time spent a decade ago as the sole |
| Briton leading a team of United Nations medics in |
| Sarajevo. She chats plenty but is not one to emphasise |
| anything more than the honour of helping during those |
| war-ravaged months. |
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| It is clear that this 42-year-old is superb at maintaining her |
| focus when, literally, under fire. Children on the steps of a |
| building in Sarajevo were under mortar attack. It never |
| crossed her mind as she began treating those that were |
| treatable that she, too, was in mortal danger. "The thing |
| about treating any casualty is you're trained to focus in on |
| the problem, unaware of anything else," she says. |
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| She can similarly focus on her cross-country riding. "It |
| requires intelligent aggression and it fits my personality |
| better than the deliberate, pedantic approach of show |
| jumping." |
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| Only two years before she rode at Burghley, she was there |
| as part of the medical team vainly trying to save Simon |
| Long's life, after his horse landed on him. |
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| "I don't - can't - let those thoughts impinge on my riding or |
| it would be impossible. When I was waiting to start the |
| steeplechase phase there, Buck Davidson had just |
| sustained a broken back. I was in deep, technical |
| discussion with the course doctor about exactly where his |
| injury was, and nearly missed my start." |
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| This laudable, pragmatic attitude is deeply engraved from |
| 10 generations of doctors within her Welsh family roots. |
| Her un-horsey father, a London surgeon, was unwittingly |
| responsible for fuelling his daughter's equine passion. One |
| of his patients, Labour peer and former MP Reggie Paget, |
| wanted to do his surgeon a favour, so kidnapped his |
| pony-mad 13-year-old daughter and introduced her to |
| hunting in Leicestershire. "And I never wanted to live |
| anywhere else after that," she says. |
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| Following a classic education, Benenden and Oxford, she |
| met Andrew Jacks at St Thomas' Medical School in London. |
| She was 18, he 21. Five years later they married, both |
| joining the Army. |
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| Now a colonel and eye surgeon, Jacks is somewhere deep |
| in Iraq. His wife only knows that he will not be back for |
| Badminton, "but I did hear from one of the patients he |
| sent back home that he was sitting in a trench with |
| pneumonia and a respirator on". She laughs, but the strain |
| of her husband being away for so long is telling. |
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| She is half as bouncy as normal and admits that he is her |
| rock and that it has been a much harder build-up to |
| Badminton than to Burghley. Having recently moved to a |
| farm house with three acres in her beloved Leicestershire, |
| she finds it hard keeping everything going on her own, as |
| well as maintaining her three-day-a-week job as the, now |
| civilian, doctor to the King's Troop at St John's Wood. |
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| Natalie Edwards has been with her and Don Giovanni for |
| two seasons. She takes him on long, slow hacks up and |
| down the Leicestershire hills while her boss works in |
| London. Lloyd-Davies then adds what she can of fitness |
| gallops, dressage in whatever field she finds out hacking, |
| and show jumping only when she goes for an occasional |
| lesson. |
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| The brown, 17.2-hand gelding bred in Ireland by an |
| American sire, Don Tristan out of an Irish draught mare, is |
| all quality and class, with an unusually exquisite head and |
| eyes. You can trace parts of his body back to his mother's |
| cart-pulling side, but as is so often the case, those traits |
| are what produce the enormous power and balance you |
| feel when you ride him. |
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| Horses with this wonderful mix of blood are a dying breed. |
| Ireland took the hideous step a few years ago of |
| developing the 'Irish Sport Horse'. For this, they imported |
| the more posy-moving German warm-blood, whose past is |
| seeped in carriages and indoor riding halls, as the |
| alternative to their own indigenous, plainer-moving Irish |
| draught, evolved from horses that best crossed the |
| extremes of Irish hunting country. |
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| Maybe there is a grain of truth in the assertion that all the |
| decent Irish draughts had been sold abroad, leaving |
| insufficient quality from which to breed. The importing of |
| the flashier European, however, will all too soon dilute the |
| courage and cat-like cleverness for which Irish horses are |
| celebrated across the world. The likes of Don Giovanni will |
| soon be found only in the history books. |
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| Don Giovanni is gentle, laid back, does not pull and loves |
| his cross-country. He has a well-hidden nervous side |
| though, discovered when he gently bit me. He is terrified |
| of the whip and of horses coming towards him, which does |
| not stop him doing a good job in the dressage. It is only |
| his show jumping that has, unusually considering his |
| breeding, been rather expensive. He becomes very tense |
| and poles roll so easily. |
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| "No event has prepared me for the rigours of the four-star |
| event as well as the Melton Hunt Race [a unique race over |
| natural country]," Lloyd-Davies said. "That taught me the |
| sheer survivability and commitment needed. But my |
| biggest fear is letting my horse down." |
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| 29 April 2003: Funnell in tune for Badminton |
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