BLENHEIM Palace’s famous duck has gone. As for the teddy bear, we will all have to wait and see, because David Evans is a man who likes to keep a surprise up his sleeve.

Among the treats for the thousands who head to the Blenheim International Horse Trials each year are the fences created by Mr Evans, the man charged with building the course.

To call them fences is to sell him short, for the pigs, bears, dogs, foxes, badgers, owls and giant snails that he creates are all remarkable wooden sculptures.

“People ask to see my drawings. But I can’t draw, I create with a chainsaw,” he said.

“I have been using one for 30 years, so I’m not scared of getting stuck into a piece of wood. All it takes is a chainsaw and a little imagination.”

For many people it is now difficult to imagine the Woodstock event taking place without the involvement of Mr Evans, who lives with his wife and two sons Matthew, eight, and Thomas, six, in the village of Middle Aston.

He has been involved in creating the courses for 20 years in the surroundings of the Duke of Marlborough’s ‘back garden’.

As well as building the fences, he is also assistant course designer to Eric Winter.

Mr Evans’s carvings were initially produced to adorn cross-country jumps for fun, as his trademark.

The potential of sculptured fences for courses hit him when he was working on an event sponsored by a hotel casino, and his dice and playing card fences proved well worth the gamble.

Now his fences are hugely popular with spectators around the world and they were there to be admired by millions at the Beijing Olympic Games, when he produced pandas, giant carp and pot-bellied pigs.

“My dragon head carving formed part of a jump on the Olympic cross-country course,” said Mr Evans.

“It ended up being featured on the front page of the South China Morning Post.”

Getting to the Beijing Olympics was the realisation of a dream for Mr Evans.

Having recognised that he would not make it as a rider, he realised creating some of the biggest and best cross-country fences at home and abroad was the best way of securing himself a place at the games.

For much of his career he has collaborated with one of eventing’s biggest names in course design, Mike Etherington-Smith, who became director of the Blenheim trials when they started in 1990 and went on to design the course for the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

Together the two men worked on courses from Hong Kong to Chatsworth House, before Mr Etherington-Smith went on to become chief executive of British Eventing, the governing body of horse trials in the UK.

But Blenheim, which is now in its 20th year as an international three-day, three-star event, has remained a personal favourite of both men. Last year it drew crowds of 65,000 to Woodstock, attracting some of the world’s leading riders and top young horses.

But it also brings in crowds simply there to enjoy the spectacle, displays and trade stands – and to see a few riders go wrong at the water jump.

Mr Evans said: “It is just such a fantastic site to work on and is now rightly recognised as one of the leading three-star events in the world.

“For the horses and riders, Blenheim provides a marvellous education, with the big crowds and grandstands, while for the public, it is a beautiful place to look around.”

This year’s trials take place between September 9 and 12.