A wonderful day at Firle Place, we took the plunge and attempted our first ever long arena test on grass and stepped away from BE95 to BE94, Championship test! The section was marked really hard but very fairly in my view and we got 37.8 - I agree with the score, he was a little bit flat in my view. I have later learnt that the judge liked the horses that had pazaz and whiz about them. This is certainly somthing we are working on and hopfully by this time next year we will have nailed it!
The SJ was a very tough course, some tricky lines and great use of the terrain. We had a super clear, but sadly just got a little onward bound down the hill and just rubbed the final planks. Then onto a super XC clear!!! By far the biggest XC we've done to date with some excellent questions (And several of the Badminton Grassroots fences!), just 2.8 time penaltys to add. I think this was probably due to trotting the huuuge hedge!!! Can't wait for our first crack at a 100 at Munstead in a couple of weeks. Prep is going really well so am looking forward to finally taking the plunge and stepping up.
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I am very excited to have been short-listed as a Brand Ambassador for Equo Events, the new online entries system from Horse and Hound! A very good friend told me about the opportunity so I thought I would give it a go and enter. Little was I expecting to be short-listed for the role! The entry process involved answering a few questions about the horses and our career with them so far followed by a 2 min video! This is something that I have never done before so tried to get a bit creative....Check out the full video here: Another great outing at Chilham Park. Since this event started we have been going and to this day - it is still my favorouit event on the BE calender!
My dressage was at 8:56 so it meant a very early start - but on the plus we were finished by 11am. I was pleased with our dressage, I felt the test was accurate and he was active. I belive the judge liked it too as we scored a very respectable 34.8. The best score in the section was only 31.5... The Showjumping was over a very well built course and it was very twisty and actually rather long too. Smokey juped his little heart out but sadly we had the last fence down. As a rider it was my fault, he got a little bit long and onward bound down the hill. The XC was again a fantastic course. It had a couple of questions and some tougher fences. The team at Chilham made a fantastic effort with the ground. It's not often an event in mid August runs with such fantastic footing. We had a great round, and had our best XC score to date with just 0.8 time to add. Over the moon with how the day panned out. We ended on a final score of sub 40 - which is our best ever score to day and overall 13th. If we hadn't knocked the final SJ we would have been 3rd but I will leave myself that challenge for another day..... |