Rosanna Verdon, 11, from Adderbury was highly commended in the under 15 category of the Martin Wills Memorial Trust Awards for a creative writing piece based upon horse racing.

The Carradus School pupil was among 74 people who submitted entries within the age group and was presented with a book token and a day at Newmarket Racecourses for her short story, The Finishing Post.

Rosanna, who regularly watches horse racing at home, said: "I was thinking about what things are on a race course, like hedges and I thought of a finishing post and how it was made.

"I was really pleased to be highly commended because I was the youngest person to win a prize."

The annual competition, which is in its 16th year, invites entrants to submit a creative writing entry on, or with a background in, any aspect of horse racing.

The articles can be based upon fact or fiction and entries are split into three age groups; the under 26s, the under 19 and the under 15 category.

Rosanna was just ten when she composed her first-person piece about a tree which is cut down and re-assembled as a finishing post at Cheltenham Race Course.

Chairman of the judges and trustee Brough Scott said: "It's been a pleasure reading through the entries and never more than the smashing idea behind ten-year-old Rosanna Verdon's 'Finishing Post.' We gave it a special prize. It really deserves a cartoon film of its own."

The Martin Wills Memorial Trust is a UK-registered charity which commemorates Martin Wills, an amateur jockey, point-to-point rider, racing enthusiast and journalist who died in April 1992, aged 39.


Read Rosanna's story, The Finishing Post, below.
The Finishing Post
By Rosanna Verdon


I WAS a tree, a lonely tree in the middle of a field. I got bored every day and had nothing to do. So, I just stood and looked and watched birds flying in the sky. Sometimes my friend, Betty Blackbird, visited me and we had a chat.

One day I spy people coming into the field with chainsaws and a great big red truck comes after them. I wonder and think for a moment and then I have a horrible feeling:
"Maybe they have come to cut me down?" I said in terror. "Oh no my lovely bushy green curls and my rough body and my thin arms!"

The men came closer and closer then revved up their noisy orange chainsaws. One sharp jab went into me. I fainted.

I woke up dazed. I didn't know where I was and what to do. I was in a large green room and there were lots of busy workers everywhere hurrying about preparing themselves to chop this delivery of wood.

I WAS SCARED!

Men approached me and set their chainsaws on my beautiful body. I tried to scream but no sound came out. I fainted again. Did you know that some of the really beastly men even cut my beautiful curly green locks off! When I recovered from my faint I found I was a long stick with a rounded top. After that I was left in the corner of the green room.

A few days went by….

The men came back and loaded me onto the red truck. They drove me quickly to a spray company. They sprayed me with a white body and a red head. I thought the spray paints tickled me! I thought this was most peculiar. When that was finished I was loaded onto another bigger truck with things that looked just like me. They kept stopping at different places and I could hear the truck driver saying in his deep voice "This one's Ascot, the next stop is Haydock, then we shall go on to Cheltenham." I hadn't a clue what he was talking about.

When we arrived at this unknown place called Cheltenham, somebody grabbed hold of me and pulled me out. We were somewhere where there were a lot of fields and some fences and great big stands. The person who was holding me tight plumped me down in a suitable hole in the ground. They knocked me hard on the head and made sure I wasn't going to topple over, then drove off into the distance.

A few days later the atmosphere changed. A lot of people started to arrive in their 4x4's. They filled up the stands and I could see someone with a microphone near a hedge saying 'Hello, I am Alice Plunkett'. I had heard my friend Betty Blackbird talking about Alice Plunkett when I was in my lonely field. She had also said that she had watched racing from the Commentators roof and had told me all about steeple chasing. I had learned quite a lot about the horses, the jockeys, the colours they wore and their trainers.

It was now that I realised where and what I was.

"I am the finishing post at Cheltenham Racecourse!"

I couldn't believe it. I wonder if Kauto Star is racing with Ruby Walsh up on top. I was so excited. I could see Alice Plunkett talking and in an hour a race started. I could feel the ground trembling beneath me. It was like an earthquake it felt worse than the one a few nights ago! Betty had told me Ruby's colours so I could just make him out in the distance. I was so nervous. I could see the horses and their brightly coloured silks of the jockeys coming closer. First they were a spec in the distance and hey they were coming over the last fence. One horse raced past me and it was Ruby on Kauto Star! It had to be him his colours were the ones Betty described. I could see the smile on Ruby's face when he finished.

I am so happy in my new job and I hope I will always stay here as a finishing post.

Did you know that Betty sometimes still comes and visits me and we have a chat. Instead of flying to the Commentary box to her perch she comes and sits on my head. She says that my head provides a better view!

So that's the story of an ordinary tree that ends up to be a finishing post!