Story and photos Kellie McIntyre.

The Rolex Kentucky Three Day Event is America’s premier equestrian event, watched by 70,000+ spectators on the ground at the Kentucky Horse Park, and millions on American television. In 2008, the ‘up hill and down dale’ course will become the ‘Chip and Dale’ course, thanks to the appearance of two giant wooden squirrel jumps.

One of those seven foot, solid wood squirrels is the handiwork of course builder and chainsaw carver Mat Langeliers. And while Chip and Dale are currently hunkering down for the Kentucky winter, their creator is soaking up the sunshine in his new home: Melbourne’s Mornington Peninsula.

In 1996, eighteen year old Mat Langeliers left his home in Portland, Oregon USA to work as an Assistant Coursebuilder on the Rolex Kentucky Three Day Event. Armed with a basic set of tools, and a belief that he was destined to be a cowboy not a coursebuilder, he saw Rolex as a mere diversion.

Cut to twelve years later, and that ‘diversion’ has seen him travel the length and breadth of the USA dozens of times over. It has taken him to several continents. To a list of high-profile events including twelve consecutive Rolex’s, Badminton, the Sydney Olympics and the Australian International Three Day Event in Adelaide. Into work with some of the world’s best-known course designers – including Mike Etherington-Smith, Captain Mark Phillips and Hugh Thomas.

But in recent years, it is not the big-name events that have drawn attention to the bearded thirty year old. It is the big-scale chainsaw carvings he has left behind at those events. Now, when he goes to work on a new course, in addition to the usual array of oxers and trakehners, course designers also request feature chainsaw carvings.

Langeliers’ squirrels, Loch Ness monsters, ducks, fish, alligators, honey pots, armadillos and dinosaurs – measuring up to twelve feet long and seven feet high and doubling as cross country jumps – dot US event courses from Montana to Florida. In Australia, his handiwork has graced the Australian International Three Day Event in Adelaide ever since he carved a giant possum there with Australian Coursebuilder Craig Gordon in 2004.

In fact, Langeliers’ reputation as carver of giant wooden characters now threatens to eclipse his considerable coursebuilding skills. Which is ironic because, to hear him tell it, the chainsaw carving evolved almost entirely by accident.

‘My first carvings were two goose heads for a couple of jumps at Rolex in 2001’, he says. ‘They were fairly basic. All I did was really get the outer shape. I didn’t have any details like eyes or cheeks or anything.’

At successive events, he was asked to carve more and more intricate characters. First a squirrel at Rolex. Then a series of ducks. Some twelve foot trout. And what America’s equestrian course owners see at Rolex, they soon wanted for their own properties. Soon, he was fielding requests to carve at other courses across the USA. In 2007 alone he created three dinosaurs, fish for three separate courses, an alligator and one of the new squirrels that will appear at this year’s Rolex event.

‘I never really contemplated doing any particular carving until the owners or designers asked ‘can you do one of these?’ Then the more I carved, the more detail I could add. The more I figured out how to do detail, the more creative I could be. At first, the ideas were kind of rough. But then I started to get more of a feel for what I could achieve with a small-tipped chainsaw.’

Today, his chainsaw collection includes six saws. The longest has a 42-inch bar and is used to separate big slabs of timber from the huge logs weighing several tons that are Langeliers’ raw material. The smallest – used for finer, more detailed carving such as eyes, scales and feathers – has a 12-inch bar. That chainsaw collection now resides on two continents. In 2005, Langeliers married an Australian he met at the Sydney Olympics. Several months ago he relocated to the Mornington Peninsula … for (semi) good.

Ever the traveller, Langeliers will not commit to staying in one place ‘forever’, saying only that ‘we’ll be here for a few years at least. I’ll probably go back to the States for a few months each year to work on a few favourite courses, and to do new carvings for clients there.’

But for now, America’s loss is definitely the Mornington Peninsula’s gain. The organiser of the Red Hill Agricultural Show, Liz Dart, has commissioned Langeliers to carve a pair of showjumping standards as a demonstration for the March Show. Her interest was piqued when she saw pictures of the trout showjumping standards he created for an event in Montana.

‘It was an idea that was a year in the making – I had to think for a long time about how to get a piece of wood into that shape,’ says Langeliers. ‘It was also the first relief carving as opposed to 3D carving – that I had ever done.’

Mat Langeliers will appear at the Red Hill Agricultural Show, Easter Saturday 22 March. The standards he carves will feature at the Red Hill Showjumping Show at Treehaven in Somerville on April 5–6.