When Rudi McEwin opens her wardrobe, she sees a sugar-plum fairy ice-skating costume side by side with dirt-stained, faded, blue jeans and well-worn, button-up collared shirts that she wears campdrafting.
The costume is a child’s pink leotard and reminds her of the years when she would pull her hair up into a bun, stick on fake eyelashes and paint her face with makeup.
It’s a different look from her style while campdrafting — a unique Australian sport involving a horse and rider working to manoeuvre cattle around a set course in under 40 seconds.
“I do feel like a different person,” Rudi, from Adelaide, says.
“If you looked at me at a campdraft covered in dust with dirt across my face, you wouldn’t necessarily marry that with the prim and proper little figure-skating girl.
“I’ve probably worn the same pair of jeans for the past five years campdrafting, but you’d seldom see a figure-skater wear the same costume twice.”
Learning to fly
Rudi is “addicted” to campdrafting, but says her pathway into the sport was unusual.
From six years old, instead of pulling on cowgirl boots, she found herself sitting beside an ice rink in Adelaide, pulling on a pair of cheap plastic rental skates.
“I really liked the feeling of being on the ice,” she says.
“You do truly feel like you’re flying.
“Doing some really cool stunts, like spinning on a single blade or jumping and rotating in the air … it was thrilling.”
Her hobby turned into competitive figure-skating, a sport involving doing tricks, leaping, and dancing to music while skating on ice.
She devoted her childhood to the sport, training morning and night for up to six hours a day.
Her discipline saw her compete at the Australian Nationals in single and synchronised figure-skating.
When she was about 15 her coach said she would need to train even more to stay competitive, but that would mean dropping out of school and going professional and Rudi wasn’t interested.
Off the ice and onto a horse
Rudi was passionate about another hobby — campdrafting.
She had tried the sport in between her skating schedule and at her first campdraft had a swing of luck.
There was one cow, bigger and taller than the others, with horns, which no-one had dared approach.
Her dad thought she should take it.
She cut out the cow, called the gate and before she knew it was around the first peg, then the second peg and seconds later was through the gate.
“As I came through I threw my hands up in the air, I was so excited!” she says.
“I was hugging my horse’s neck, I could hear my dad and brother cheering from the grandstand.
“That feeling was like, ‘Yep, now I’m hooked, this is the sport for me.”
Rudi made the decision to stop figure-skating and turned her full attention to campdrafting.
“Galloping on a horse feels exactly like flying, so I still had that thrill,” she says.
“I left figure-skating behind and I’ve been chasing cattle ever since.”
She has competed in campdrafts around the country, including at Harts Range in the Northern Territory.
Similarities between sports
Rudi is the only figure-skater-come-campdrafter she knows, but says some former figure-skaters go into dressage or cross-country horseriding due to the skill crossovers between the sports.
“When you’re figure-skating, you’re on two thin blades, so you’ve got to have really good balance on one leg and the other leg while spinning in the air,” she says.
“When horses are moving quickly under you, you have to constantly be shifting your balance to stay with them.
“A lot of figure-skaters tend to pick up horseriding quite quickly because of that.”
No turning back
Though she has an appreciation for both sports, after more than a decade of campdrafting, Rudi says she’d never go back to figure-skating.
“Figure-skating taught me about commitment and if you’re going to do something, give 110 per cent,” she says.
“But campdrafting is where my heart’s at.”
Loading