Riding Club National Champs Qualifier

Lucy and I have been selected to be on the team for Delamere Forest
Riding Club in the show jumping team qualifier for the Riding Club National Championships. We are making up the trio to jump the 1m section. We travelled to a local venue in Middlewich on Sunday 20th June on a beautiful sunny morning. We met up with my 2 team members, Jo and Alison, and walked the course for the qualifier. It was supposed to be 1m but it was quite small in my opinion, so i was confident that Lucy would jump clear. We were drawn 2nd for the team and Lucy duly jumped a lovely clear in the first round, as did Jo and Alison to put us in a strong position. We had to jump off with 8 other teams to decide which team would make it through to the final. Jo went first and jumped a lovely 3rd clear. Lucy and I followed and i went as quickly as i could without risking having a fence down. Lucy jumped another lovely clear which just left Alison to jump. Unfortunately her mare had a very unlucky pole down to leave us in 6th place. I was extremely pleased with Lucy today she jumped fanastically.

BRAND HALL BE90 - 5th June

Today Mum, Lucy and I travelled to Brand Hall to do our 2nd BE90. As horses usually prove, anything can happen and the day showed a mixed bag of fortune. In the Dressage, all was going well until something caught Lucy's eye and we ended up cantering sideways during our change of rein in trot! Despite this, we scored 36.5, which i thought was fair. Onto the show jumping, it was spooky and bright but not overly big, Lucy jumped clear this phase so I went onto the cross country hoping to improve on our dressage placing.

The course was beautifully built but fairly straightforward except for fence 3 which was through a small gap in the hedgeline onto an angled table, which was my only worry. Lucy set of positively and jumped the tricky angle perfectly. We continued to boldly gallop until we reached the water which was down a slope, I tried to steady Lucy in time but unfortunately I could not slow her in time, we reached the edge of the water a little too fast and she slammed the breaks on , and I duly tipped over her head! I was so cross with myself for such an amatuer mistake, but got on and finished the course well. The fall left us right at the bottom of the leaderboard. We went home happy to be safe and having learnt some vital lessons from the day.