EQUESTRIAN: Having an eye for perfection

ANENDRA SINGH
At first glance Gill Morley and 15 or so other people could pass off as keen spectators at the Hawke's Bay Showgrounds, in Hastings.
To the uninitiated, Morley and her merry mob could simply be mistaken for avid horsey types, taking a ringside interest in their children's pursuits.
They often sit in the front seat of their cars, only metres from elegantly attired dressage riders perched on prim-and-proper mounts.
Every so often Morley and her friends, still fixated on the riders, will mutter something, looking straight through the windscreen while the person next to her, head down, will furiously jot down some key words akin to a secretary in an office.
But looks can be deceiving.
They are, in fact, some of the top dressage judges in the country who officiate in the equestrian arena and will deliver some discerning remarks about competitors in the Farmlands Summer Dressage Championship starting today.
The two-day event has lured 88 riders and 105 horses from throughout the North Island. Freestyle to music classes will play a big part, with the championship also acting as a qualifying show for the National Championships and Horse of the Year Show.
Morley, a full-time laboratory technician working at the blood transfusion department of the Hawke's Bay Hospital, in Hastings, has been a dressage judge for more than a decade.
So why on earth do they plant themselves in cars like fans watching soccer at Park Island on a bitterly cold winter's day? Is it because of the crappy summer weather we are experiencing now?
"No, in Europe they have boxes for judges to sit inside but here they use the showgrounds for other things so you can't have permanent boxes," a softly spoken Morley explains patiently.
Morley is a Northern Hawke's Bay judges' delegate to the parent body, Dressage New Zealand, and also helps recruit new judges. She attends a judges' clinic once a year and is gradually climbing to the top rung of the discipline.
"The clinics are important in ensuring all judges are consistent in their rulings. You can attend an FEI (international body) judges' clinic in Taupo too, which basically means you can travel around the world," she tells SportToday.
But that's where she draws the line. The tour of duty abroad does not appeal to her.
"There are places I want to go to but they don't have horses," says Morley, who will be judging at the Zilco Christchurch tournament next year.
Organising judges is also part of her repertoire and she fulfilled that for this weekend. However, organising them for the Kelt Capital Horse of the Year Show is a mammoth task, something she accomplished last year when she mustered 35 of them from New Zealand and overseas.
So do they look up and down some 18.2 hands high thoroughbred as Tyra Banks and her associates would on the catwalk in the television show, America's Next Top Model? At a base level, Morley explains, they are looking for rhythm in the pace of the horse, the "bend" (how they negotiate corners) to detect stiffness and how straight they trot on a line.
"In the higher grades they are expected to execute greater movements with a collection of paces and extensions," she says, trying to break down the jargon.
Passion is a critical factor when she talent scouts for potential judges.
"It's hard work and you have to make sure you are doing it with the right concentration level, especially at the Horse of the Year Show where you could be focused from 9am to 3pm," says Morley, impressing that apportioning the same amount of time to each entrant is vital.
She took up the job when she was 43 years old after someone approached her following a dearth of judges. Today there are 15 judges in the province, the youngest is 18 years old and the oldest, Tiny White, an 80-something in a predominantly female domain.
Morley started riding horses when she was three years old after her father, Stan Morley, an Englishman, would finish his "lambing beats" on the family farm.
Dressage, jumping and crosscountry followed but Morley reckons White, of Otane, was her mentor.
"She's a wonderful horsewoman who has done dressage for many years and has represented her country," says Morley, who fell in love with dressage in the 1970s while watching White perform in a musical freestyle event for the first time at the A and P show in Hastings.
Today Morley still rides her ponies, Oliver and Zephyr Corr, and is awaiting the delivery of a third mount, Bruce, from Te Mata breeder/rider/judge Carol Eivers' Parkridge Stud.
She emphasises that a supportive partner in judging is also essential.
"My partner, Hans Rombouts, is very supportive, even though he knows little about horses," Morley says.
In fact, Rombouts is a "classic petrol head" who often competes at motor racing events in Pukekohe, Manfeild and Taupo.
I would never have picked her as a petrol head but Morley reveals that two years ago she won the Woman Driver of the Year title at Manfeild in an Alfa Romeo Junior.
However, with dad Stan a merchant navy man, the Morleys were a nautical family.
Brother Ian, of Hawke's Bay, represented New Zealand in yachting.
Gill Morley plied the oceans as a member of the Napier Sailing Club too until her father sold the yacht. "That's when I went back to horses again," she says before adding with a grin that, she and Rombouts still enjoy sailing today.