Field and Kiwis up against it to qualify for Beijing

Kallista Field isn't expecting miracles when New Zealand's dressage team attempts to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Olympics at Palmerston North's Tielcey Park this week
Field, from Pahiatua, will be riding her mother's horse Soda as the Kiwis strut their stuff in front of an international judging panel consisting of Mariette Withages (Belguim), Dieter Schuele (Germany), Mary Seefried (Australia), Minako Furuoka (Japan and Jan Bird (New Zealand).
To make Beijing, Field and her New Zealand teammates Jody Hartstone (Taglan), Bill Noble (Waingaro) and European-based Maree Tomkinson have to produce a better team score than Japan and Australia.
And with Japan already having completed their assignment with a very respectable team total of 194.792 Field is under no illusions as to the magnitude of the task.
"The Japanese have done well, probably better than you'd normally expect from them," she said yesterday. "They've set a standard which is going to take some beating."
Australia will be next cab off the rank with their team in action in Sydney yesterday and today and then will follow New Zealand at Tielcey Park tomorrow and
Thursday.
The announcement of which of the three countries has qualified for Beijing is not expected until February 13.
If the news is favourable for New Zealand it will be the second time Field has competed at Olympic level, having already produced a best-ever New Zealand effort by placing in the top 25 individuals at Sydney in 2000.
She rode Waikare then and, in typically, honest fashion, freely admits that Soda still has a way to go to measure up to that mare.
By the stallion Uraeus, who is better known as Braego in the Lord of the Rings movie, Soda , like Waikare, is owned by Kallista's mother Sharon and the 13-year-old gelding is bred along lines which suggest he should be better suited to eventing than dressage.
But in the nine months they have worked together Soda and Kallista Field have become a formidable combination in the dressage arena although Field acknowledges that while Soda is a "great trier" he is unlikely to become a real force on the international circuit.
"It's an uphill battle but the fact is he gives everything he's got every time he goes out there and you can't take that away from him," Field said. "He'll never fail because of a lack of trying, that's for sure."
Field believes that on a "very good day" Soda could produce a score of around 66 per cent which would compare favourably with the Japanese average percentage total of 64.931 per cent.
"It would be nice to think we'd come up with that sort of score at Tielcey this week but there are no guarantees, he'd have to be right on his game for that to happen," she said.
In the longer term Field is expecting big things from another of her charges in Salutation with his potential being such that aspirations there include the 2010 world championships and the 2012 London Olympics.
"Beijing came up a bit early for him but he's certainly got the raw talent to compete with the very best," Field said of Salutation. "Give him another couple of years and he could be anything, he's going to be worth waiting for."