RobinHood
Well-Known Member
Went to Tweseldown yesterday with Oli and Sparrow, they were in the Intermediate which is run over the PN course.
The dressage warmup was packed (they used the tiny bit and put the sj where the warmup is for BE) and the ground was very hard so Sparrow didn't warm up too well. They went over to their arena and as they were trotting round it all suddenly came together. Oli said afterwards that as she was trotting round she thought to herself, "come on spaz, we've been doing this together for 5yrs so pull your socks up!". Their test was absolutely lovely, definitely the best they've ever done so spaz got lots of hugs and polos
Went to walk the xc and we thought it was more testing than the PN has been previosuly but there wasn't anything oli was worried about. Walked back past the scoreboard and saw that their dressage score was up. Now bear in mind that Oli's had spaz for 5yrs and to date their best mark has been 34 and the worst 41, we couldn't believe it when we saw they got 22 and best dressage !!!! Phoned my mum, phoned my dad, phoned my friend, oli was ecstatic! (more hugs and polos for spaz!)
We waited a while for them to build the showjumping so ended up standing around grappling for the shade. They were using the plastic set of jumps and they were all on a slope or a camber so it wasn;t a particularly nice course. The first few people had a bit of trouble with refusals and poles all over the place, and then the person before oli fell off so we could see it wasn't riding too well. Anyway sparrow jumped a nice fluent round but had one down, which isn't like him but it seemed like lots of people were going to get sj penalties.
Onto the xc, oli was warned that i f she missed a fence out at this point she would be walking home
and I positioned myself by the last fence wih the camera. It was nerve racking because he's never had a xc fault at this level but you still know something could go wrong! They jumped a lovely clear round so then we just had the wait to see how they did time-wise.
Washed spaz off and walked him round and then wandered back over to the scoreboard. Oli's score was the only one up and they'd finished on 26.0
and we could see that the person with a dressage score of 25 had sj penalties so they'd won!
Let's just say that for once we didn;t mind hanging around for another 4hrs for the presentation because we were all so pleased
. Funnily enough it was the dressage oli was so pleased with because it all finally came together, the rosette for best dressage meant more than the one for winning. Sorry this is so long, we haven't really come back down to earth yet!
Photos:
The dressage warmup was packed (they used the tiny bit and put the sj where the warmup is for BE) and the ground was very hard so Sparrow didn't warm up too well. They went over to their arena and as they were trotting round it all suddenly came together. Oli said afterwards that as she was trotting round she thought to herself, "come on spaz, we've been doing this together for 5yrs so pull your socks up!". Their test was absolutely lovely, definitely the best they've ever done so spaz got lots of hugs and polos
Went to walk the xc and we thought it was more testing than the PN has been previosuly but there wasn't anything oli was worried about. Walked back past the scoreboard and saw that their dressage score was up. Now bear in mind that Oli's had spaz for 5yrs and to date their best mark has been 34 and the worst 41, we couldn't believe it when we saw they got 22 and best dressage !!!! Phoned my mum, phoned my dad, phoned my friend, oli was ecstatic! (more hugs and polos for spaz!)
We waited a while for them to build the showjumping so ended up standing around grappling for the shade. They were using the plastic set of jumps and they were all on a slope or a camber so it wasn;t a particularly nice course. The first few people had a bit of trouble with refusals and poles all over the place, and then the person before oli fell off so we could see it wasn't riding too well. Anyway sparrow jumped a nice fluent round but had one down, which isn't like him but it seemed like lots of people were going to get sj penalties.
Onto the xc, oli was warned that i f she missed a fence out at this point she would be walking home
Washed spaz off and walked him round and then wandered back over to the scoreboard. Oli's score was the only one up and they'd finished on 26.0
Let's just say that for once we didn;t mind hanging around for another 4hrs for the presentation because we were all so pleased
Photos:
