Today’s competition was a little strange as it was starting at 4pm instead of the usual meeting up at 7am! I tried to get as much uni work done as possible before 2pm where we all met up and ready to head off to Leicester for the final BUCS competition of the year. We managed the journey pretty nicely with no traffic and arrived early. Then we soon began looking at the horses in the demo for the dressage.

I was put on an older looking mare, however she did move very nicely however although I found in the beginning of the warm up she resisted against me quite a lot. Team member Beth helped me out immensely in the warm up by getting me to do a load of transitions to settle her down a little more as she had no brakes to begin with, then causing me to focus on the positioning of my hands and keep them nicely in position. From the warm up I felt really confident, and knowing that the horse wouldn’t work over her back in the time we had, I wanted to focus on the style points, making sure my position was perfect and really defining the corners. When we went in I felt really confident and nicely remembered the test, our corners became so deep I thought that we almost went out of the boards at one point! The horse rode really well though it was fantastic and I felt really confident, to then find out that I then achieved my highest dressage score ever whilst competing, at an amazing 67.6% I was so pleased with myself and ready for the jumping.

Jumping came around and I was put on a really big horse. He was pretty tall at being over 16hh, but he was also quite bulky and had a little cob in him too, so he felt so large compared to what I have been riding for the past few months. I got on and he was full of energy and like with my horse earlier, he had no breaks! This was a little concerning when in the warm up, and when going over the fences I found that he had a super short stride which I didn’t know how to ride, then when going over the warm-up fences he did once fence jumping massively and then the next he added half a stride. This was a little difficult to go with. Going in the ring I was a little stressed and not nearly as confident as I usually am with the jumping, plus I couldn’t breathe in my body protector so I decided to just get it done. Amazingly we went clear which I couldn’t have asked for more, however I must have not got many fabulous points as I gained a massive 19 penalties!

When the results came I thought I would have gained at least an individual placing, however sadly my name was never announced which was pretty annoying, however when looking at the results it was odd looking at the massive difference in penalty points between our team and Leicester’s team, on the way home we were a little suspicious that perhaps they got the judge to mark them better so they would win, as we have experienced them to cheat before which is a little disappointing and kind of a downer to end the year on, however we still got team second which was something to be proud of, so now I’ll just have to wait until September to try for the teams again. But I’m still really proud of myself getting such a good dressage score and doing a clear round for the first time this competing year!