Eventing: Tait adopts low-key approach to Takapau

Blyth Tait will swap mentoring for competing in Hawke's Bay this weekend. Photo/File

Former Olympic and world eventing champion Blyth Tait will compete in the Central and Southern Hawke's Bay horse trials in Takapau this weekend.

Although Northland's Tait, 56, has only been back in New Zealand for a week he will have two rides at the Arran Station-hosted trials which have attractred more than 200 horses and riders. He will ride his semi-retired horse Xanthus III, who returned to New Zealand earlier this year to live with Tait's former groom Fiona Fraser.

Fraser has prepared him for the Oaklane Stables CIC2* class, having evented him at 1.05 metre level last autumn before he was fully acclimatised. She had not evented for a decade or more, so it is all about horse and rider having fun.

"We'll keep it low key as I don't know how it will go. I've only been on him a couple of times," Tait said.

He can't recall the last time he competed in New Zealand but, if everything goes to plan, he will ride in the CCI3* at the Puhinui Three-day Event in December. He will also ride Jane Callaghan's strawberry roan, Weiti West End, in the Equissage CIC1* at Arran Station, having a "leisurely introductory run to see how things go".

Tait retired from international competition after the 2004 Athens Olympics, and had the best part of eight years working with racehorses, pre-training and preparing yearlings for the sales, but, like Sir Mark Todd, he succumbed to the lure of international eventing and returned to the United Kingdom to make a comeback.

It will be a rare privilege to watch a rider of Tait's calibre compete in the Bay over courses and levels Bay fans are used to, not to mention the attraction of seeing the best-performed Kiwi combination from last year's Rio Olympics, Clarke Johnstone and Balmoral Sensation, competing at the top level in the Red Snap'r CIC3* class.

Start times for Tait: Weiti West End: dressage Sat 8.56am, showjumping Sat 11am, cross-country Sun 11.36am. Xanthus III: dressage Sat 1.25pm, showjumping Sat 2pm, cross-country Sun 1pm.

Start times for Johnstone: Balmoral Sensation: 4* dressage demonstration, Sat 1pm, 3* dressage Sat 9.12am, showjumping Sat 10am, cross-country Sun 2.30pm.