Bossanova
Well-Known Member
Today was Moon's 3rd intermediate and final event of the season.
Set off nice and early, leaving myself plenty of time. Well, 3 hours and 2 combine harvesters later, I pulled up very late and with no time to walk the xc as planned before dressage
She warmed up well for the dressage, I had the double bridle on and she was pretty good. She then did a fairly ok test, we had resistance going into both shoulder ins, a jog in the walk (my fault for pushing for too much in the extended) and a disagreement on the turn onto the final centreline but otherwise she felt much more submissive and I was happy. Not so happy when I got my sheet and the judge hated her, made some nasty comments and gave her a 5 for her paces- totally unecessary imho. Scored 45 which is about our usual
I immediately had a quick tack change and went to sj warm-up as I needed to walk the xc quickly after my sj. They told me they were running to times and they'd try to slot me in but not to count on it so I jumped the cross a few times to settle her and resigned myself to a long wait. Then the guy came up and said I had 2 before me. Arghhhhhhhh!!!!! Quickly whizzed a few uprights and parallels which were all stupidly big but she did jump them very well!
Went in and the course was on the small side and very twisty turny. She jumped really well but we got a rubbish stride to the bogey fence, no. 7 which was a very peculiar gappy slanty plank thing so had it down to finish with 4 faults.
I then ran round the xc (well, ok, I ran the downhill bits!) then got her ready and went. Had a little show off to the crowds when asked to enter the startbox but once we were in there was no looking back, she found it all very small and easy.
They did very well to put a course together given how wet lots of their ground is but it left a bit of a mis-match of a course with 9 out of the 20 fences involving skinnies or doubles of skinnies and nothing up to a decent height really (I like big!)
The middle section of the course was very demanding accuracy wise- there was a double of skinnies then a plain fence to a double of angled skinnies, then a very upright and narrow corner, then a big narrow brush in between two trees with a 90 degree turn to a brush skinny and then another double of skinnies and then yet another skinny!
The turning combination of brush skinnies was where she really impressed me- she over-jumped the first so I had my reins in a bit of a mess but she spied her next jump, turned herself and jumped it spot on. Clever Moon!
She was spot on the whole way round and gave me a super ride. I galloped the last 3 fences to try to get closer to the time which was fun
Ended up with a nice clear and 10 time penalties. Given the conditions through some of the woody bits this was fairly quick amongst the intermediate sections. Unfortunately because I was in the OI to avoid the ballot, I was way off the pace.
So thats us done for the year- no more eventing till March
We acheived my aim for the year which was to step up to intermediate and qualify for CIC** and she feels far better in the jumping phases than I ever dared to hope. We have a long winter of dressage training ahead of us.......
Thankyou to Jiffy for her help, she took some photos which she will post later
Set off nice and early, leaving myself plenty of time. Well, 3 hours and 2 combine harvesters later, I pulled up very late and with no time to walk the xc as planned before dressage
She warmed up well for the dressage, I had the double bridle on and she was pretty good. She then did a fairly ok test, we had resistance going into both shoulder ins, a jog in the walk (my fault for pushing for too much in the extended) and a disagreement on the turn onto the final centreline but otherwise she felt much more submissive and I was happy. Not so happy when I got my sheet and the judge hated her, made some nasty comments and gave her a 5 for her paces- totally unecessary imho. Scored 45 which is about our usual
I immediately had a quick tack change and went to sj warm-up as I needed to walk the xc quickly after my sj. They told me they were running to times and they'd try to slot me in but not to count on it so I jumped the cross a few times to settle her and resigned myself to a long wait. Then the guy came up and said I had 2 before me. Arghhhhhhhh!!!!! Quickly whizzed a few uprights and parallels which were all stupidly big but she did jump them very well!
Went in and the course was on the small side and very twisty turny. She jumped really well but we got a rubbish stride to the bogey fence, no. 7 which was a very peculiar gappy slanty plank thing so had it down to finish with 4 faults.
I then ran round the xc (well, ok, I ran the downhill bits!) then got her ready and went. Had a little show off to the crowds when asked to enter the startbox but once we were in there was no looking back, she found it all very small and easy.
They did very well to put a course together given how wet lots of their ground is but it left a bit of a mis-match of a course with 9 out of the 20 fences involving skinnies or doubles of skinnies and nothing up to a decent height really (I like big!)
The middle section of the course was very demanding accuracy wise- there was a double of skinnies then a plain fence to a double of angled skinnies, then a very upright and narrow corner, then a big narrow brush in between two trees with a 90 degree turn to a brush skinny and then another double of skinnies and then yet another skinny!
The turning combination of brush skinnies was where she really impressed me- she over-jumped the first so I had my reins in a bit of a mess but she spied her next jump, turned herself and jumped it spot on. Clever Moon!
She was spot on the whole way round and gave me a super ride. I galloped the last 3 fences to try to get closer to the time which was fun
Ended up with a nice clear and 10 time penalties. Given the conditions through some of the woody bits this was fairly quick amongst the intermediate sections. Unfortunately because I was in the OI to avoid the ballot, I was way off the pace.
So thats us done for the year- no more eventing till March
We acheived my aim for the year which was to step up to intermediate and qualify for CIC** and she feels far better in the jumping phases than I ever dared to hope. We have a long winter of dressage training ahead of us.......
Thankyou to Jiffy for her help, she took some photos which she will post later
