Why I always thank the volunteers and officials at every event

I had a bad dressage test at Boneo Park once. The kind where you leave the arena in a fog, hands shaking, and you barely remember the trot serpentine even though you rode it a hundred times the week before. The judge had been fair. The writer had been kind. The steward had smiled when I came past. And I walked straight past all three of them to the lorry without saying a word. That was years ago, before I made it a rule to thank every volunteer and official at an event, no matter how my own day had gone. Looking back, that silence is one of the things I most regret about my early years in the sport.

Eventing runs on goodwill. Behind every working day, every flowing show jumping round, every clear cross-country effort, there is someone standing in the heat, holding a radio, or scribbling down your time. The riders get the applause, but the people who make the day possible rarely hear a word. I started thanking them because my mother told me to, and I keep doing it because I now understand how much it means to them and how much it steadies me. This is a small thing, but small things change the atmosphere of a competition.

The crew who arrive before you do

When I roll into a venue at dawn with the float still covered in dew, the arenas are already set up. The dressage letters are out, the dressage boards are up, the show jumping course is being measured, and somewhere a tractor is dragging the cross-country. At Boneo Park on the Mornington Peninsula, the ground team has often been there since the day before. The cross-country fences have been re-painted. The start box is clean. The tractor tracks have been levelled out so the going is as fair as it can be for a hundred different horse and rider combinations.

These people are the first ones I look for when I arrive. I find the course builder if I can, or one of the long-suffering folks raking the sand. I tell them the arena looks beautiful. I ask their name. Nine times out of ten, the answer comes with a story about how they have been volunteering at this event for fifteen, twenty, sometimes thirty years. They have been at the Melbourne Three Day Event since before I had my first pony club pin. Their dedication is the reason the rest of us can have a day out.

The dressage judge behind the letterbox

A dressage judge sits in a car, a hut, or a folding chair, depending on the level, and they do an extraordinary amount of work for a cup of tea and a sandwich. They have read your entry in the program before you have warmed up. They have been briefed on the movements. They are watching for clean transitions, soft corners, and that elusive moment of self-carriage. A good judge, the kind we are lucky to have here in Australia at events from SIEC to Wallaby Hill, knows when to read the room and offer a steady, fair mark to a nervous rider. A great judge knows when a green horse is having a meltdown and gives a comment that helps rather than hurts.

I learned to thank my dressage judges properly after a couple of seasons of hiding in the warm-up ring. Now I walk up, hat in hand, and ask if they have any feedback I can take into the next test. The answers have shaped my training in ways I never expected. If you have ever walked out of a small arena wondering what just happened, the piece I wrote about staying positive in dressage touches on that same feeling. Judges are not the enemy. They are the people who hand you the scorecard, and the graciousness of the exchange stays with you long after the day is done.

Fence judges on cross-country

Cross-country would not exist without fence judges. They stand at the side of a course in every imaginable condition, in heat, in dust, in the kind of summer humidity that gets you on the Mornington Peninsula in late January, and they hold a flag, a radio, and a clipboard. They mark your jump number. They call the doctor if things go wrong. They tell your trainer you went long at the second water, because the trainer is back at the lorry and cannot see a thing. They are often dressed in hi-vis, carrying a walkie-talkie, and they have been on their feet since before you left home.

I always stop at the first fence judge after a round. It is a small thing, but a sweaty rider leaning over the rail to say thank you to the person who saw the whole effort, not just the result, is a moment worth having. There was a judge at Wallaby Hill in the Hunter Valley who told me she had been volunteering since the late nineties. She remembered riders I had never met. She knew which horses struggled at which combinations. She had watched generations of young horses grow up around the back of the truck. When I thanked her, she looked genuinely surprised. That surprised me more than anything.

The voice you hear and the voice you never hear

A lot of the work at an event happens over a two-way radio. The technical delegate, the controller, the cross-country jury, the start box steward, and the paramedic team are all talking to each other while you are cantering around. They are tracking your progress, watching for unsafe riding, making sure the ambulance is in the right place, and pulling the course if they need to. The voice in your ear that tells you to slow down at the second water complex is not a robot. It is a person, and they are carrying a great deal of responsibility in the heat of the moment.

After a few sticky rounds, I started seeking out the control centre to say thank you at the end of the day. It feels strange, walking up to a window and asking to speak to the controller, but every single time I have done it, the people inside have looked pleased. They spend the day in a small room, eyes on screens, listening for trouble. They are the reason eventing is still as safe as it is. The calm voice telling you to slow down is not an interruption. It is a colleague.

The office staff and the gate crew

Behind every running event is a small army of admin. The secretary's office is where late entries are sorted, draws are shuffled, scratches are processed, and prize-giving is somehow orchestrated. The people at the gate take your money, hand you your number, tell you where to park, and handle every grumpy parent who has driven four hours from a regional branch to watch their kid ride. In a sport where everything is run by volunteers, this layer of work is invisible, and it is the layer that would collapse the moment everyone stopped showing up.

I try to make eye contact with the gate volunteer as I drive in. I try to say hello to the office staff when I collect my number. The response is always warmer than I expect. Many of them are riders themselves, or parents of riders, or retirees who just like being part of the day. A simple thank you costs nothing. A small chat about the conditions, about the footing, about the bushranger of a cross-country course, costs even less. By the time you have thanked three or four of them, the event feels smaller, friendlier, more like a community than a competition.

The officials who carry the weight

Officials get the rough end of every sport. In eventing, the technical delegate, the ground jury, and the cross-country course designer are the people who make the calls that riders, owners, and trainers all love to argue about. The course is too hard, the footing is too soft, the time is too tight, the dressage judge was too harsh, the rule is outdated. Almost everyone, including me at some point, has muttered something under their breath about the people running the day. Almost everyone is wrong to do so.

The officials I have met at Australian events work long days, drive long distances, sleep in their own floats, and give up weekends to make sure the rest of us can have a run. They are held accountable by Equestrian Australia and the State Branches, they keep their accreditations current, and they put themselves in the firing line so that our sport is properly run. When I disagree with a call, which happens, I try to ask about it calmly, and I always thank them for the time. The conversation is almost always better than the rant I was rehearsing in the warm-up.

A habit that changed my own riding

The first time I started making a point of thanking the team at an event, I expected it to be a one-way thing. I was giving something to them. What I did not expect was how it would change my own head. Walking around the venue, chatting to the fence judge, the steward, the office, the judge, the controller, pulled me out of my own nerves. By the time I tacked up, I was less locked in on my own ride. I was part of the day, not the centre of it. That shift made me a calmer rider and a more present one.

I refer to my competition-schedule before every event, and I also keep a mental list of the people I want to find at each one. I look for the long-term volunteers, the course designer, the starter. I thank them by name if I can. If I cannot find them, I leave a card at the office, or I drop a note to the organising committee. It does not take long, and it is one of the few habits in my riding life I have never second-guessed.

For Australian eventers reading this, the small ask is the easiest thing in the world. Next time you head to Boneo Park, or to the Adelaide event, or to your local one-day event, find one of the people in hi-vis and say thank you. Better still, put your name down to volunteer for a half-day. Take a plate of something to the office, a card to the controller, a wave to the gate. Our sport is built on the willingness of other people to give up their weekends so that we can ride. Honouring that is the least we can do, and it is a habit I hope my kids pick up as they grow into this wild, generous, slightly chaotic world of eventing.