The Kennel Club & Pedigree Agility events

The most sought after agility finals to compete in are without a doubt the Kennel Club Agility Finals at the Olympia Christmas Horse show, equalled only by Crufts itself in the agility world. At Olympia, there have different classes of agility finals on each of the five days of the show. It is an extremely busy agility event for the organisers and the judge with four Semi finals for the Kennel Club Olympia Agility Stakes at Christmas, the YKC Agility Dog of the Year which qualifies for Crufts and the Pedigree Team and Pairs Relay finals.  So it was agility all day for each of the three days of the show. Dave Ray, event organiser, reports.

The City of Birmingham Show really is a superb venue for agility with great facilities, and we were really made to feel at home. This year we had the benefit of a newly reseeded arena which made it even better. Day 1 Friday One of the biggest events at the City of Birmingham Show is the Novice Semi-final. Although there was engraved crystal and rosettes etc for the top dogs, the main aim for the handlers was to be placed in the top 35 as that is the number that would be invited from this event to compete in the Olympia Semi-final to be held on Sunday, 21 December 2008 Just to get to the Semi final, handlers had to be in the top three in one of the heats from maybe up to 500 dogs competing so just to qualify for this semi-final was an achievement itself. This year 59 handlers had qualified. As with all of the classes at the C of B, our judge Bill Glover had designed courses that were achievable and fast but not easy and certainly needed a high degree of handling skill.  Running third, Matthew Goodliffe went into the lead in what we thought was an unbeatable time of 28.64 seconds, and he held that until Will Rolfe running 20th did an unbelievable round in 28.37 to snatch the lead. We didn't think that that could be beaten, but we were proved wrong when young Tracey Flower with her Border Collie Dellekko Madame Barbie, running 32nd, floored us all by taking the lead in a time of 26.38. That was the position that she would hold until the end even though Joanne Tristram with her crossbreed was close to taking the lead in a time of 27.13 seconds she couldn't quite take the lead.  Also worthy of mentioning were Fiona Vaughan with her WSD finishing in 3rd place and Sarah Young with her BC finishing in 4th place, the last two only being separated by 100ths of a second. It certainly was what I would call an exciting competition with some of the favourites going out and some of the younger handlers coming in.

Judges Report from Bill Glover With three full days of judging (14 classes) this is certainly one of the busier appointments to be offered, and a fair amount of midnight oil was expended on designing the courses. I was pleased with the way that they ran, and hope people enjoyed them as much as possible under the circumstances! All the agility at City of Birmingham takes place in a single dedicated ring with a mixed audience of agility enthusiasts and breed handlers. We were lucky with the weather which, although overcast, remained warm and dry for most of the time. This meant that the ring remained in good condition, and even more importantly we were able to enjoy our evening meals - courtesy of top chef Dave Ray - in the open air! Unfortunately with so many events it isn't feasible to give a 'blow by blow' account of each one, but the full results are included with this report. There were some simply stunning rounds, and my congratulations go to those who finished up in qualifying places for Olympia or Crufts. Of course, there were an equal number of 'if onlys' and hard luck stories. My commiserations to those who didn't qualify, but well done for reaching the Semis in the first place - no mean feat in itself! Finally I would like to thank Dave Ray and his crew for their help and hospitality. In particular Shaun Young and Rob Hunter who did an excellent job of putting up all my courses. And also my wife Pia who, despite looking after two small children, a baby, and five dogs, also worked as the caller each day and ran her Maisie as a 'white dog' before the various finals. My thanks to you all. It was a privilege to judge the various agility finals and semi-finals at the 2008 City of Birmingham Championship show, and I'd like to start by thanking the Kennel Club and Pedigree for continuing to support these events and all the qualifying heats throughout the year.

Results
KC OLympia Novice Agiity Stakes Semi Final

The Kennel Club Olympia Agility Stakes supported by Pedigree is the original Olympia agility final.  It used to be open to all Large grades of dogs but, due to the sheer numbers in agility and the advent of other finals for them, it is now limited to Grade 6 & 7 dogs which are the top grades in the UK. 

This was the penultimate semi-final for 2008 and with 20 dogs competing the top five dogs go through to an Olympia semi-final on Saturday 20^th December in London where they will join the other 30 dogs who have qualified. Bill Glover had put up a fairly testing course for this competition and the handlers worked it hard and skilfully so only five were eliminated and, quite remarkably, only two dogs had faults so there were 13 clear rounds.  So time would be the deciding factor. As it turns out the maximum course time allowed of 42 second would be academic.

Commiserations of the day went to Mark Laker who went into the lead when he ran second and then had to stand and watch himself drop through the places to end up in 6^th place. There were some stunning runs in this competition and the first handler to compete the course clear in under 30 seconds was the very skilled YKC handler Anthony Clarke in 29.879 seconds. Once more we didn't think that anyone could beat it that was until, running 18^th, a young lady who we are not too familiar with in the southern part of the country, Doreen Charnock, snatched first place in a time of 29.56 seconds with her WSD Big Mac.  So there were at least five happy people and lots of 'if onlys' on this the first day of the City of Birmingham show and the sun was still shining.

Results
KC Olympia Large Dog Agility Semi Final 6

Day 2 Saturday
In the morning of the second day, we ran the Junior classes for the Young Kennel Club (YKC). They were competing for the City of Birmingham Dog of the Year trophy and qualification for Crufts which has been reported on separately. This was skilfully judged by Bill Glover and Lucy Smith the YKC manager was on hand to look after all the administration.

In the afternoon, we had two events qualifying for the Kennel Club Agility Stakes Finals at the Olympia Christmas Show -both were supported by Pedigree.

The first event of the afternoon was the final Semi-final for the Large dogs. As in the previous days, this is restricted to top grades of handlers and dogs only. As it was the last Semi-final, competition was going to be fierce.

There were only two eliminations in this round and eight clear rounds but I have to say, I felt really sorry for Mike Richardson. He had an elimination on the Friday and slept over in his van on the Friday night and had an absolutely wonderful run in the warm up event taking first place, Then he just made one small mistake in the Semi-final which turned into an elimination. He was going too fast. Otherwise, I'm sure he would have won it.

The first clear round we had was Tracey Stiff, running 4^th, in a time of 31.87 but she didn't stay there long as Lynne Ward, running next, clipped half a second off her time to take the lead. Lynne didn't stay there long because running next was Alan Bray who clipped another half second off her time and took the lead in 30.89.  One of my favourites ran at 11^th. Well, I should say one of my favourite dogs. Kathrin Tasker's Winsome Winnie, the Lurcher, went into third place with a clear in 31.38, but she was soon pushed down to 4th place when Lynne Ward ran her second dog at 14^th and went into second place in 31.07. So now Lynne had two dogs in the top five.

Running 16^th, Jo Tristram assured herself of another place at Olympia with her borrowed crossbreed Cascades Heavenly Promises.  It was a remarkable achievement for Jo as she had already qualified dogs for the Medium and Novice finals at Olympia this year. Lynne Ward was in the fortunate position of qualifying two dogs in the top five but. as handlers are only allowed to compete with one dog in each final, it meant that her highest placed dog would qualify. That was her young dog Waggerland Rookie. The very fortunate 6^th placed handler was Tracey Stiff who will be running at Olympia with her WSD Mr Scrumpy.

Results
KC Olympia Large Dog Agility Semi Final 7