Today was competition day! Seeing as I joined the club late this year I was lucky enough to get a place onto C team. This morning we all got up early and headed to the yard as the competition was at home today. We got the horses ready pretty quickly as thankfully there was no need to plait!

The other teams arrived at around 9am to do a rider and horse draw. Thankfully I was placed on a 17hh grey called Jasper, he was really sweet looking although he was quite spooky! We warmed up indoors and then did the test outside, I was a little worried as Jasper changed a little by being outside. The test went okay however he threw a few tantrums going into canter which lost me quite a few marks, but in the other sections I made sure to get his head carried nicely and to try to make up for it! Looking at the scores I managed to get 63% which wasn’t my best but I was still pretty happy with it given Jasper’s head tossing.

Then we moved onto the jumping and I was pretty happy as it was super cold standing around all the time. Before jumping I had to demo a different horse to the one I was riding. His name was Rupert and I was a little worried about riding him as a couple of girls had told me they had fallen off of him when jumping! He was pretty slow and hard to get going so it was pretty hard work! We managed to get around the course nicely although he did refuse a fence, however that was my own fault as a rider and not being confident with him. We also had one of our team members Amelia fall off – very slowly – in the demo from a horse called Dinky, she was okay in the end but had to go to A&E and turned out to have a fractured rib! (She’s healing up nicely now though!)

Then when it came to the jumping round I was on a lovely chestnut called Tess who I had ridden in training a week ago. It was great as I knew to ride her with a light rein as some other girls I saw were yanking on her mouth. We went around the course beautifully with no fences down so I was pretty happy with that, although I was pretty tired by the end of it!

When it came to results I knew that my dressage score would have brought me down a little, however I managed to get individual 6th and team 2nd which I was really happy with! Looking at the scores it was clear that the rest of the team were really close to placing too however I was the only one who managed it, but I am still super happy with #teamderby can’t wait for the next one!