So the other night I was all settled in bed with my book rather relaxed and ready to go to bed. Then I get the message asking if anyone can fill in for the A BUCS team competition the next day! I was the only one available to do it and I was really nervous about saying yes as the A team is all of the best riders from the universities, and I know I am not quite up to that standard. So I then spent the remainder of my evening getting ready and running around my living room trying to learn the test, it was a little more complicated to the one I did last week for C team but thankfully I worked it out and decided to have it read to cover my own back just in case. I couldn’t bare the thought of forgetting a part of the test like last week!

The following morning I got up and ready and headed to meet the rest of the team. We then drove to Nottingham to Trent Valley Equestrian Centre, I have ridden there multiple times before and its used to be my local riding school before I had a horse of my own. We arrived around 9 am and then did the horse draw and rider draw. I was the first on my horse which was a cute little chestnut. I didn’t know his name sadly, but within the demo he looked as though he ran away a little in the trot, so my team mates gave me some tips to half-halt to stop him running away. When I got on I was pleasantly surprised. The horse moved nicely and I gave him a light rein which he seemed happy with. We went into the arena for the test and it went really smoothly and I was pretty calm. There weren’t any major hiccups but he could have been a little more forward and I didn’t get much difference in normal trot compared to the medium trot! It was a movement I had never done before.

At lunch I had a score of 61.25% in dressage which I was a little gutted about, the comments were about the smallest details so I didn’t know if it was a particularly harsh judge but I tried my best. By the time we came around to the jumping I was freezing! So it was certainly nice to get moving and to warm up. I was on a little coloured for the jumping and he popped the fences nicely but he had a tendency to refuse the fences. When I got on he was the strongest pony I had ever ridden and he had no brakes whatsoever! It made me a little nervous as I did not have much control at all and his jump was a little strange and I found that we just didn’t flow together like I did with Tess last week.

I made it round the course however and I had to push him before every fence as it felt as though he was going to refuse for all of them but we managed it! Teammate Laura filmed my round for me and the commentary was full of her telling me to kick on! The round itself felt pretty messy but looking at it it seems as though his canter felt very fast but he was moving at a normal pace, so it was definitely a strange ride.

Results time! So with it being against the best of the best teams across the universities #teamderby didn’t do that great. We got team 4th overall and Laura placed 2nd which was amazing. I was 15th! I tried not to let myself be too disappointed as the same kind of scores would have got me an individual placing at a C or B team competition, but it was still fun to do and we got some cute pictures, plus another ribbon for the collection even if it was just the one for today!