Junior pair make NZ team

Wairarapa Endurance Club provides two members of the four-strong New Zealand team for the 2011 FEI world junior endurance championships to be held at Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates on December 10.

Emma Mason and Tessa Duess are part of a squad which, for the first time, will take their own horses with them to compete in what is certain to be a hotly-contested event.

They will face a course which takes in a gruelling 120km in temperatures and over terrain completely foreign to them.

Duess, 21, and her mount Aspen Hills Santa Ana were selected after a very successful 2010-11 season.

They were the only combination to complete back-to-back 160km rides in both the North Island and national championships held in Karatau.

A meritorious eighth in the senior division at the North Island champs was followed by a third placing in the young rider division at the nationals.

Aspen Hills Santa Ana was bred by Tessa's mother Gabrielle Duess, who passed away last year and was a huge influence on her daughter's endurance riding career.

Mason, 17, will be riding Taralea Sheer Illusion owned by well-known Wairarapa endurance identity Shane Dougan. He is the most experienced horse in the Kiwi contingent and the tallest at 15.3 hands.

He also has excellent form, having successfully completed four three-star competitions, and Mason rode him to a notable victory at the national championships at Karatau by an impressive 58 minutes.

Mason, who had her first experience of endurance riding as a 10-year-old, lists Dougan as one of her main mentors. She competed for New Zealand in the 2009 transtasman competition at Ruahine where she was sole Kiwi finisher on her own horse Tararua Mistalight, which was bred by Dougan.

Joining Duess and Mason in the New Zealand team are Sian Reid, 21, of Maramarua and Georgia Smith, 15, from Taihape.

The quartet flew out yesterday in order to give their horses time to accustom to the change in climate conditions.