Borde Hill Monday competition results

[pootler]

I just had a look at the results for Borde Hill today, wow, looks like carnage.... lots of eliminations and withdrawals. Was the weather particularly bad today, I know the course can be up to size but it seems like there were a lot of problems today. Can anyone give some feedback?

 

[TGM]

It rained persistently from midday onwards and I understand from reports it was pretty wet underfoot yesterday even when weather conditions were much better. We went but only braved the dressage and SJ phases - respect to all those whose were confident enough to attempt the XC, especially at the end of the afternoon when it was extremely wet and slippery indeed. But also respect to those who made the decision to retire/withdraw - you have to make the decision which is right for horse and rider depending on levels of experience and confidence. Daughter hunts regularly and is used to dealing with wet conditions but Novice is a new step up for her and the size and technicality were deemed to be to big an ask in the conditions and silly to risk it at this stage.

 

[quizzie]

Not carnage....it was just a bog after persistent rain.,no fault of the organisers or the course....just bad luck with the timing of the rain.

I had a horse there for his second novice, & would have loved to ride the xc under even slightly better conditions, but after a fair dressage, & a good confidant SJ, decided that it was too great a risk today....will definitely be back later in the year for the second one.

 

[vic07]

Have added pictures to the SOuth east Eventers league Facebook site. Should give you an idea about the mud!

 

[bluebellfreddy]

The ground was not great, I was one of the lucky people to benefit from all the people having problems over show jumping and cross country. I came 5th after having had 6 poles show jumping but only 9 people finished my section. The Novice Xc did not actually run that badly, since you could actually get off ground that had been run over in 90 and 100 . They did well to keep running with that much rain, and too take out a fence that had got very bad.

 

[Mike007]

It was certainly tough ,but do able. I sent "A "off this morning in the lorry as I had some work to do and promised to drive down later.Glad I did as just as I arrived she texted me to sound out my opinion of withdrawing. The dressage had been a ghastly slippy wet affair .We invested in a set of ginormous studs and decided to give the showjumping a try. Our warm up was restricted to some pretty low fences on the principle that it was better to be in the right frame of mind than try to jump the height and risk scareing the horse. Dennis had 12 faults but jumped like a true star. In fact he went better than usual .
It was helpfull that Caroline Jean had her horse jumping at about the same time and gave "A" some much valued moral support. WE decided to give the XC a go. I have every respect for those that made the tough decision to withdraw. Some horses are just not safe in that going. Dennis is tough but not built for "Mud plugging"He is however incredibly safe. I do not normaly walk the course with "A" as it is a real challenge for me with my injurys. Today however ,I insisted . The toughest fences had very good artificial takeoff and landings so this took a huge amount of my own worries away,but I reminded her that even a "let up" fence with bad ground can bring you down. I also joked that at least the Duck in the lake had still got a good take off and landing.
I reminded "A" that they could pull up at any time if things started to go wrong ,and she promised that she would if she thought it necessary.
My gratefull thanks to the starter who did a fantastic job keeping some slightly jittery riders calm and focussed. As He said to me ,anyone who even starts yhe XC on a day like today should be proud of themselves. I am also extremely grateful to him for lending me a radio so that I could follow "A"s progress. (Did I look that worried?). A had two stops at the skinny after the drop,more glance offs really. She is hopping mad with herself for the second one as she just didnt line him up well . But as I tried to explain ,tired horses ,tired riders ,working far harder and having to think fast ,yes you do make mistakes . Dennis finnished blowing hard ,but regained his breath quickly . He had found it tough but still doable. I was really proud of the paair of them .
Other riders showed how it could be done .Cheryl Freed (sorry if I spelt this wrong Cheryl) had a nice double clear ,following "A" round the course.
There were some falls but it sounded like most if not all were OK .I hope so.

 

[vic07]

The starter at Borde hill is brilliant!

 

[Mike007]

And I guess we should also say a big thankyou to everyone else who worked so hard on our behalf,fence stewards and lets not frorget the tractor drivers too

 

[pootler]

Thank you all for your feedback, I hate to gloat but where I am we have had glorious sunshine all day.

I have been to Borde Hill in the past when the weather has been bad so the results make sense now.

 

[TGM]

And I guess we should also say a big thankyou to everyone else who worked so hard on our behalf,fence stewards and lets not frorget the tractor drivers too

Yes a huge thank you to all the volunteers, not nice to be out in that weather even if you are competing, but particularly unpleasant for those helping out, especially the ones out in the open such as dressage stewards, starters, arena party etc. thanks to all those who made the event possible in horrible weather conditions.

 

[Nicnac]

Echo thanks to the helpers.

We were there yesterday morning and were finished by 10.30am so really got best of the ground. That said the SJ was already slippery and sprog had to change her line XC as ground already very muddy compared to when we walked the course Saturday pm. The walk up to dressage and XC on foot was awfully slippy yesterday morning so must have been lethal today.

 

[fabscd]

I was stewarding (well, gate opening!) for the SJ all day on Monday, and there were an unbelievable number of people coming out with 12/16/20 pens, very few real disasters, just looked like horses couldn't get their legs off the floor and were having poles left right and centre. It didn't look like there was much more anyone could do about it, just the ground keeping horses very much on the ground!
Well done to everyone who competed yesterday, i didn't envy you the conditions, and don't envy you the clean up job either!

 

[tiga71]

I was fence judging at Fence 2 yesterday. We didn't have any problems at our fence and the ground held up well on that fence though we did quite a bit of stomping it down.

Saw a couple of falls at Fence 3 but horses and riders ok.

The rain in the afternoon was horrible and we thought all the riders and horses were very brave. We have only fence judged a couple of times so were very glad to get an easy fence to look after. It was such a shame the weather was so awful.

 

[chestnut cob]

Yes a huge thank you to all the volunteers, not nice to be out in that weather even if you are competing, but particularly unpleasant for those helping out, especially the ones out in the open such as dressage stewards, starters, arena party etc. thanks to all those who made the event possible in horrible weather conditions.

I think we should all say a big thank you to any event organisers and volunteers who were out this weekend! I competed in the BE80 at Berriewood and the weather was pretty diabolical. I was surprised they ran at all; I was lucky to be really early so although the DR arena was wet and slippery, it wasn't a bog. SJ was OK at 9.30am when I went in but the rain didn't really stop all day and judging by the cricket scores on the board later on, it must have caused problems. XC was pretty wet but thankfully my little Irish pony loves wet ground, he's like a hippo and jumps much better out of that than hard ground. There were continual delays to the XC throughout the day and the 100 was eventually abandoned.

All credit and respect to those who were out in that dreadful weather all weekend, serious dedication!