The Bit UK Nov/Dec 2016 | Page 10

EVENTING PODCAST UNCOVERED What do you get when you bring together four people so fiercely passionate about the sport of Eventing that they make life changing decisions to make the sport better? Self-confessed eventing geeks, fuelled by a deep seated passion, and most likely caffeine for midnight recording sessions, come together to launch the Eventing Podcast. The Eventing Podcast has been six years in the making, with Sam Watson initially purchasing the domain name for the idea back in 2010, however ideas of talking to the world about Eventing were put on the back burner whilst, together with Diarm Byrne, he worked on launching EquiRatings. So how does a top Irish eventer (Sam finished as the highest placed Irish rider at the 2015 European Championships) with a Maths and Statistics degree, and a former lawyer with an award-winning business go from having an idea six years ago to broadcasting around the world? Well a little bit of girl power has certainly helped! Nicole Brown and Jenni Autry make up the female half of the four ‘man’ team behind the Eventing Podcast. Nicole being the rising star in eventing commentary with a 2016 worksheet including the Event Rider Masters, the BBC at Burghley and a touch of EuroSport, and Jenni being the Managing Editor of Eventing Nation – the US eventing publication with a huge following and a serious amount of American sparkle. Brown, when we spoke to her earlier this month about this latest piece of eventing innovation originating from the dynamic duo over in Ireland. I thought it was a brilliant idea as there wasn’t really anything like it already out there. No outlet for looking at the bigger events, previewing and reviewing. The focus is really on the trivia and the facts and figures which is great as we “Having worked with them (Sam have the EquiRatings stats and Watson and Diarm Byrne) as part of we basically get to geek out!” the Event Rider Masters over the summer, they approached me Each with their own roles, the about getting involved with the team of four have brought podcast idea” commented Nicole forward a multi-faceted “