29

April

South of England 1 2015

Sam Penn

South of England

A local outing this week, beginning with Sarah Jane Knight’s RSH Contend’Or having his first ever outing. As a last minute substitution for Burntwood Sorrel, who is unfortunately out of action for a little while, this lovely 6yo had to make his debut in the open BE100 class, but he gave a super account of himself with a 33.3 dressage and double clear. I took him quite steady, incurring 10.4 time faults and in such a competitive section we finished out of the ribbons, but for his first outing we were over the moon.

Northern Territory was also having an outing in the BE100. After warming up beautifully he made a total pigs ear out of his dressage test after spotting the showjumping warm up through a gap in the hedge and getting thoroughly over excited and totally deserved his mark of 44. The upside of his excitement was a super double clear adding just 0.4 time penalties, however it was still not quite good enough to move him back up the leader board.

Gloris Flight had another really good outing with a lovely dressage, 33.5 was not the best of his marks but left him 3rd after this phase. A very unlucky fence down sj added 4 faults but his xc was again fantastic and 9.6 time faults was on the faster side of average allowing him to finish in 5th place.

I returned on Sunday with Pusiden for a very civilised dressage time of 12.00 in his first OI class. 29.8 was a really good mark for him as this is never his strongest phase, but we were not too far out of the running against some very good horses. His showjumping round was super and was described by coursebuilder Brian Lear as ‘one of the best rounds I’ve ever seen him jump’, so it was hugely disappointing for us just to rub the very last fence. It is the xc phase where Squid is the most fun and after a glance off at Burnham Market I wasn’t going to allow any more mistakes and he didn’t let me down. We had a brilliant round with 4.8 time penalties, (only 3 people in our section were quicker) and no jumping faults to finish the day in 8th place.

We have a weekend off next week although I am headed back to S of E on Sunday for an xc clinic but the following weekend we are aiming for Hambleden with Flight for the CIC* and Bruce for the Intermediate.

 

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