Well what a week it has been! The weekend before South of England I was attending the Pony Club National Tetrathlon Training Course at Bishop Burton College, near Hull. I set off on the long drive up to Hull at 5am on the Saturday and then it was three days of non-stop running, swimming, shooting and jumping the college horses, before driving all the way back home again. Not surprisingly I was tired and aching from all the exertion the next day, but there was no chance of a rest as I then set off to Walton on the Hill to take my Pony Club B+ test which I thankfully passed! Poor Pop was rather tired and fed up by the end of day as we were in the saddle for about 3 hours as not only did he have to do flatwork, show jumping and cross country with me, he had other candidates swap onto him for flatwork and jumping as well! The poor boy had a Pony Club rally the next day as well!
However, that didn't seem to affect him at South of England. He did a very respectable and obedient dressage test for 32.3. He wasn't quite so obedient in the show jumping and was very forward and keen, so we ended up just rolling one pole. The show jumping was obviously proving tricky for a lot of people as there were only 6 clears in my section of 30 competitors! Then off to the cross country warm up where it was apparent that the course was causing problems, by the fact that a couple of loose horses had to be recaptured, and the announcements of a number of refusals and eliminations. Then just as I was about to go down to the start they had to hold the course, as a rider and horse had fallen and needed to be checked out by paramedics (thankfully I later learnt they were OK). Not the best mental preparation for a cross country round. However, I needn't have worried as Pop was on fine form and set off really confidently around the course. A little too confident as he took an almighty flyer at the imposing ditch palisade, giving it a good foot, which gave me a bit of a shock (photo from Spidge top left)! He was foot perfect through the tricky combination that was causing problems, and then jumped beautifully through the water complex, the drop combination, the quarry etc., and soon we were heading to the final fence to finish clear! I hadn't worried too much about time as just wanted a confident clear for our first Novice of the season, but as he covers the ground well we actually only incurred 4 time faults. With no-one in our section getting the time, this was good enough to secure us third place! Absolutely over the moon with this result and especially with the way he tackled the cross country! Many thanks to Nigel Goddard of KS Digital for the two photos of the drop combination below, and also to Louisa Day who provided the photo from the water complex.
However, that didn't seem to affect him at South of England. He did a very respectable and obedient dressage test for 32.3. He wasn't quite so obedient in the show jumping and was very forward and keen, so we ended up just rolling one pole. The show jumping was obviously proving tricky for a lot of people as there were only 6 clears in my section of 30 competitors! Then off to the cross country warm up where it was apparent that the course was causing problems, by the fact that a couple of loose horses had to be recaptured, and the announcements of a number of refusals and eliminations. Then just as I was about to go down to the start they had to hold the course, as a rider and horse had fallen and needed to be checked out by paramedics (thankfully I later learnt they were OK). Not the best mental preparation for a cross country round. However, I needn't have worried as Pop was on fine form and set off really confidently around the course. A little too confident as he took an almighty flyer at the imposing ditch palisade, giving it a good foot, which gave me a bit of a shock (photo from Spidge top left)! He was foot perfect through the tricky combination that was causing problems, and then jumped beautifully through the water complex, the drop combination, the quarry etc., and soon we were heading to the final fence to finish clear! I hadn't worried too much about time as just wanted a confident clear for our first Novice of the season, but as he covers the ground well we actually only incurred 4 time faults. With no-one in our section getting the time, this was good enough to secure us third place! Absolutely over the moon with this result and especially with the way he tackled the cross country! Many thanks to Nigel Goddard of KS Digital for the two photos of the drop combination below, and also to Louisa Day who provided the photo from the water complex.