Australia's equestrian dressage elite are preparing for the Sydney International Grand Prix, starting this Thursday at the Sydney International Equestrian Centre.
With a possible Olympic place up for grabs at this Sydney CDI*** event, there is a growing sense of tension among the hopefuls.
More than $3million worth of horseflesh will be on display during the four days of competition, which features the Olympic qualifier for dressage and a World Cup qualifier for Show Jumping.
Many of the dressage horses have price tags in excess of $100,000, and are purpose bred for movement and temperament and the years of training that goes into training a top dressage horse.
The two Australian competitors at the Sydney CDI*** who have a chance of earning enough ranking points are Mary Hanna and Ricky McMillan. Australia's third hope for an Olympic berth is Kristy Oatley-Nist who is currently competing in Europe.
Heath Ryan is one of the others in contention, but will need to pull out something special at this event. "My biggest motivation is to try and beat the girls!" he said with a wry smile
Dressage is a sport dominated by female riders. "I hate being beaten by them... and it particularly irks me when my wife, Rozzie, is also ahead of me," he said.
He said like all sport, the trick in equestrian dressage was to perform at the right time.
"It's always difficult to get your best five minutes worth of work in the arena, rather than in the practice arena or three days ago -- it's always a challenge to produce the best in the competition environmentm," he said. "A horse and rider partnership blossoms with maturity, so things usually can only get better."
Other Sydney CDI*** feature events are the high-level dressage tests of the Prix St George [Thursday morning], Prix St Georges Derby [Saturday afternoon], Grand Prix Special [Saturday morning] and Grand Prix Freestyle [Saturday evening].
The International Equestrian rankings will be finalised on Monday, with three places up for grabs at the Athens Games.
The Australians are currently lying just out of range of a place and are hoping for some first class performances in front of the international judges to edge them into the running.
Image copyrighted: Dirk Caremans