A Spare Pair of Socks and What Wet Days Have Taught Me About Eventing
There's a pair of woollen socks that lives permanently in the passenger footwell of my ute. They came out of a Bunnings grab-bag three winters ago and they've never made it back into the house. They sit next to a crumpled muesli bar wrapper, a pair of binoculars and a hoof pick that has seen better days. Most weekends I forget they're there, but every now and then I am grateful beyond reason that I tossed them in. Wet days at horse trials have a way of turning a comfortable rider into a miserable, blistered wreck, and the difference between finishing a cross-country round with your boots full of water and finishing it with dry feet can come down to something as ridiculous as a spare pair of socks.
I am not a professional rider, and I do not pretend to be one. I run a small blog about the realities of amateur eventing in Australia, and one of the things I have learned across years of mucking stalls, travelling to competitions and writing about my own disasters is that preparation is everything. You can train your horse until he is supple and willing, you can school every fence in your arena and still find yourself caught out by something as mundane as the weather. A spare pair of socks is a small thing. It is also a small act of kindness toward your future self, the one who will be standing in a muddy lorry park at six in the morning trying to remember where she left her gloves.
The morning the heavens opened at Wallaby Hill
I keep thinking back to a particular October morning at Wallaby Hill, somewhere in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. The forecast the night before had been uninspiring but manageable, a 40 per cent chance of showers, the kind of weather report you read once and then forget. By the time I got the horses fed at half past five, the sky had committed to something more dramatic. The rain came sideways across the trot-up area and turned the gravel into a shallow creek. My jodhpurs were soaked before I had finished braiding the first horse.
It was one of those days that reminds you how exposed eventing can be as a sport. Dressage happens in an arena, often with some kind of shelter, but show jumping and cross-country are at the mercy of whatever the sky decides to deliver. Cross-country day is especially brutal. You are out in the open for hours, walking courses through long grass that soaks through your boots in seconds. By the time I was halfway around the track, my socks had given up any pretence of being dry. I felt every blister forming. I felt every stone. Somewhere between the Logs at four and the Trakehner at seven, I made a promise to myself: never again.
That promise became a habit, and the habit became that pair of Bunnings socks in the passenger footwell. It also became a checklist of other things that have saved me from small misery ever since.
When the rain hits the cross-country course
There is a particular smell to a cross-country course after heavy rain. The grass gets that sweet, earthy scent. The footing turns from springy to heavy, and the fences that felt confident on a dry day suddenly feel like a question mark. Australian courses are built for tough conditions, because the sport grew up here on hard, sun-baked ground, but even the best course designers can only do so much when a week of steady rain turns the paddocks into a sponge. I have ridden at Boneo Park on the Mornington Peninsula when the ground was holding water in the divots, and I have walked courses at Adelaide Hills events where the approaches had been re-routed to avoid the boggiest lines.
The interesting thing about wet weather is that it does not just affect the horse's footing. It changes the way the fences ride, the way the combinations feel, the way your own body responds to the demands of the course. Cold muscles are tighter. Wet hands slip on the reins. Wet boots rub in different places. All of it adds up to a different kind of round, and a different kind of preparation. When I look at my competition schedule in the weeks before an event, I am now checking the forecast almost as carefully as I am checking the course map.
Why socks matter more than you think
There is a temptation in equestrian circles to focus on the horse's comfort and forget about your own. We are taught to think about rugs, coolers, hoof packing and electrolyte paste. We budget for the good saddle pad and the new bit. We forget that we are also athletes out there in the weather, and that the rider's condition affects the horse's performance in subtle ways. A rider with cold, wet feet gets distracted. A rider with blisters on their heels shifts their weight in the saddle without meaning to. A rider who is shivering and miserable tends to take longer lines, jump more cautiously and second-guess their decisions when the fences start coming thick and fast.
A dry pair of socks is a small intervention, but it is one of those things that pays for itself many times over. Wool is the classic choice because it stays warm even when damp and it does not get that horrible clammy feel that cotton does. Synthetic blends designed for hiking or running work well too. The trick is to have them somewhere accessible, not buried under a tonne of gear in the back of the truck, but somewhere you can reach without having to unpack the whole lorry in the rain. For me, that is the passenger seat footwell. For a friend who eventers out of a small SUV, that is a dry bag clipped to the headrest.
Rain on the Australian eventing calendar
One of the things I love about eventing in this country is how the seasons shape the sport. The Australian eventing calendar runs through the warmer months for a reason. Summer brings the major three-day events and the international fixtures, while spring and autumn are full of club and one-star competitions that dot the countryside from Equestrian Park in Werribee to the grassroots events in regional Queensland. Rain is not the constant threat it would be in a British winter, but it arrives with enough regularity that ignoring it is foolish. Melbourne, of course, is famous for its four-seasons-in-a-day weather, and even Sydney can throw a southerly buster at you when you least expect it.
I have learned to look at the long-range forecast the week before an event and to plan accordingly. If there is a reasonable chance of significant rain, I pack as though it is certain. That means extra socks, a dry set of casual clothes for after the competition, a waterproof jacket that actually keeps water out rather than the fashion one, and a pair of riding boots that I have not just polished. It also means thinking about the horse. A wet horse after cross-country is a horse that needs careful cooling and drying, and a wet rider is in no state to do that job well if she is focused entirely on her own discomfort.
Beyond socks: building a real wet weather kit
The socks are the starting point, not the whole story. Over the years I have assembled a small wet weather kit that lives in a plastic tub in the back of the ute. It contains two spare pairs of socks, because one is never enough, a microfibre towel that dries quickly, a pair of dry riding gloves, a compact umbrella for the dressage arena, a few plastic bags to put wet gear in, and a spare beanie. There is also a small thermos of tea and a couple of muesli bars, because wet days are hungry days and warm food makes everything feel a little less bleak. A set of dry underlayers in a sealed bag has saved me more than once on the drive home through the mountains.
There is a mental component to all of it as well. Wet weather eventing requires a different mindset. You have to be prepared to ride a softer, more careful round. You have to be ready for the course to feel different at fence three than it did at fence one. You have to be willing to retire if the ground gets truly dangerous, both for your own safety and for your horse's. None of that is easy when you have driven hours to get there and paid your entry fees, but it is part of the responsibility that comes with riding across country. The socks do not solve any of those bigger questions, but they solve the small ones, and sometimes that is enough to keep you focused on the job at hand.
Tell me about your own wet weather rituals in the comments, drop me an email, or come and say hello at an event sometime. Eventing in Australia is a small world and the people in it are generous with their stories, especially over a cup of tea in a wet lorry. Until the next soggy dressage test, keep an extra pair of socks somewhere you can find them without having to dig through the whole back of the truck.