04/10/2026
🔔Australian Barrel Horse Association Ground Talk 🔔
Here is an insight into the ground at the ABHA Finals 👇🏼
This year, the arena was working with brand-new, fresh sand on top and the older sand underneath rather than the more established material we’re used to working with.
Fresh sand behaves differently. One simple way we assess this is by picking up a handful, squeezing it into a ball and seeing how well it holds together. When the sand doesn’t bind and hold its shape as well, it generally has less cohesion underfoot. For a barrel horse, that can mean less grip and stability when they’re stopping, turning and driving out of a turn.
The AELEC arena also takes a significant amount of water to get the footing where we like it. From our experience, we aim for around 26–28% moisture. That was the range we were working with during the record-breaking runs at the 2025 ABHA Finals.
Getting it there isn’t as simple as putting one lot of water down. Particularly in the first few days, a lot of that moisture can evaporate or move through the fresh material before the ground begins to retain it consistently. That means frequent watering and monitoring is important early on to build and maintain moisture throughout the worked surface.
Throughout the event, we checked the moisture every 25 runs, and sometimes in between, to ensure the ground remained at its best and the moisture level stayed where we wanted it.
Every 25 runs, we also repacked the arena with the skid steer, helping maintain the base and consistency of the surface. With the skid steer being over 5 tonnes, by rolling and packing the ground down it compacts it to give it the consistency for the horses to grip and pull around the barrels. The arena was then drug every five runs using Thomas Arena Products drags to keep the worked surface as consistent as possible from competitor to competitor.
The AELEC put an extra 200 tonnes of sand in for the Finals. This year, we had around 200 mm of surface depth, although we generally prefer to work with between 230 and 250 mm. To help achieve the best footing possible, we moved some of the dirt around the barrels to create a pad at each one, giving the horses the best surface we could provide through the turns.
Arena preparation is a balancing act between sand composition, moisture, depth and consistency. Small changes in any of these can make a big difference to how much purchase a horse can get through a turn which overall can equal a slower time.
We were very lucky that the Australian Equine and Livestock Events Centre were so great to deal with and were always on call with the water truck and everything we needed to get the ground as good as we possibly could.
Pictured is Lance Hutton operating the Skidsteer for the top 50 fastest times in the OPEN 8D
📸 - A McIlrick Images
