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Home / Bay of Plenty Times

Te Puke equestrian Hayley-Grace Davis in talent quest at Equidays

By Stuart Whitaker
Bay of Plenty Times·
16 Oct, 2019 11:00 PM3 mins to read

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Hayley-Grace Davis of Wake Field Equestrian and Wake Field Heartbreaker will be taking part in the 2019 Equidays Top Talent Competition.

Hayley-Grace Davis of Wake Field Equestrian and Wake Field Heartbreaker will be taking part in the 2019 Equidays Top Talent Competition.

A talent quest for horses and riders will be part of this year's Equidays, with Te Puke in with a shout as winner.

Hayley-Grace Davis has been selected as a finalist for the 2019 Equidays Top Talent Competition and will perform in the Equitainment Extravaganza Nightshow during Equidays this weekend.

Davis runs Wake Field Equestrian on Te Matai Rd where she breeds and trains her own and outside horses and teaches regular lessons. She has been training and breaking in horses for over 10 years.

She will ride her stallion Wake Field Heartbreaker bridleless in the Top Talent Competition.

''He's pretty good at it and he loves it - galloping to stop, going sideways, spinning - all to music. He has a rope around his neck because I don't have a stop button and he really does like going fast,'' she said.

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Without the bridle, she controls the horse using a combination of legs, hands and body.

To prepare, Davis has trained with Equidays Top Talent mentor Dan Steers.

''There is high degree of difficulty with this. She is going to be using speed and dressage manoeuvres and well as incorporating jumping," he said.

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"She has a great story to tell come performance night. It's great seeing Hayley-Grace live out her pony club dreams of performing with her stallion."

With Wake Field Heartbreaker, Davis has done a bit of everything including level 4 dressage, eventing, showjumping, show hunter derby and cowboy challenge.

''Riding without gear on him started just for fun really - it was just to show off to friends and have a giggle and see what you could do,'' she said. ''Over the years it just got more and more advanced and I just kept trying to push what we could do with it really. Then we got into this competition and now it's got a bit more serious and we've been training to
get really good rather than just having a play.''

She said she is looking forward to the event as it is an opportunity to show a wider audience what Wake Field Heartbreaker is capable of.

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''I've never been able to have the opportunity to show people what he can do without gear on because the rules are any stallion must have a bit and a bridle and big warning tags.''

The Equidays Top Talent final performances will be judged on horsemanship, artistic impression and crowd popularity and will feature as part of the Saturday Nightshow.

It won't be Davis' first appearance at Equidays. She previously took part in the stallion challenge - to break in and train a wild Kaimanawa stallion in five months.

''It was a huge learning curve - the tricky bit's not just training them, you've got to tame them first. There's not many places in the world you can get a horse straight from the
wild and into your stock yards.''

Equidays is held at Hamilton's Mystery Creek this weekend.

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