7

April

First event of the 2015 Season!

Sam Penn

Isleham

We kicked off the 2015 season early with a trip to Isleham (very early, we left the yard at 3am!) The three ‘grown ups’, Pusiden, First Impression and Gloris Flight were all having an easy Novice outing to get them started. The weather and the going were absolutely perfect with no sign of the ice/snow/driving rain etc usually seen at events in March. Squid and Flight both achieved nice dressage marks of 31.8 and 26.5. Bruce however who is usually the strongest in this phase simply couldn’t hold it all in and some nice was slightly spoiled (although in a most entertaining way) by some squeeking and bucking and so we had a disappointing mark of 37.5.

After our work over the winter all of the boys excelled themselves in the jumping phase with not a single pole lowed from any of them. They were all feeling fit and ready to go xc, Squid was my first to go and skipped around it for fun, without even breaking a sweat he added just 1.8 time faults and had a really nice confidence giving start to his year, taking home a 3rd place, beaten for 2nd by just 0.1 marks.

Second out was Bruce who could barely contain his delight to be at a party and was definitely in need of the run. He also gave me a really good ride and his 4.8 time faults eventually moved him up to 5th position.

Last to run was Flight who should have been in a position to be very well placed but it all went a bit to his head and we had to stop after fence 6 to have a little discussion about who was actually going to be the one in control! After realising the error of his ways he settled down and improved the further he went around the course, but we picked up a very expensive 19.6 time faults which dropped us down to 10th. However I was absolutely thrilled with all three of the boys, their first event of the year, all double clear and all going home in the ribbons.

All in all a pretty successful outing. Bruce will be better next time for having had a run and getting rid of some excess energy and I will be having a think about a change of brakes before Flight’s next trip out.  

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