The crucial cog
ON the dining table of an agricultural college where a post-competition party was taking place after the 1981 European Eventing Championships in Horsens, Denmark, stood just a chocolate cake and jugs of water.
“A French rider picked up the cake, came up to me, turned it upside down and it landed on my head,” remembers Ginny Elliot, who was on the gold medal-winning team at her first championship, aged just 26. “Well, I can tell you, [team-mate] Richard Meade stood up and said: ‘Unacceptable’ and there was the most monumental cake and water fight. It went absolutely crazy.”
The mess was cleared up (“it looked immaculate by the time that we’d finished,” insists Ginny), but when participants were threatened to have their prizes withheld for the unruly behaviour, it fell to chef d’equipe Malcolm Wallace to negotiate the team’s way out of the hostile situation.
Indeed, delve a little deeper into the role of a chef d’equipe, tasked with team management for major international competition, and it’s clear
