Summer Regionals
Last weekend Splash and I headed off to Cabin Equestrian Centre for the British Dressage Regionals Championships. Months and months of lessons, early morning starts, hard work, doubt, frustration and money, and here we were about to see if it had all paid off.
The summer regionals have been our main goal for the last 12 months and we have been working away, first of all getting our qualifications sorted and then getting out to as many competitions as possible to make sure that both of us can remember to breath and smile as we trot and canter our way through the tests!
For those of you that know me you’ll know that I am super competitive, and I’d be lying if I said otherwise! To add to that I have been incredibly lucky to have found Splash who seems to share my love of the white boards and is talented to go with it.
In our early days competing at Prelim and Novice we had some amazing successes and have been lucky enough to qualify for the Winter Champs at Hartpury. But as we have progressed up the levels to Elementary and Medium it has definitely been more challenging.
We are up against some incredible combinations and our training has had to seriously step up.
Pressure
So, before we set off this time I had a good long think about what the goal was. Previously I would have gone wanting to win, put a huge amount of pressure on us both and then got tense because I was trying too hard! Splash tries his heart out but does need me to hold his hand sometimes and tell him everything is ok, so a tense mother is not helpful!
I knew that to be in with a chance of getting a wild card to the National Championships I would need to be scoring a high 69 -70% which on our day is possible, but I also knew that I just wanted to have fun and enjoy our weekend.
Let’s face it, I had a free pass to stay away with my pony for three days, be with friends and drink the odd bottle of wine, so why ruin that by feeling nervous and putting too much pressure on us both.
So there it was – I had my goal… have fun and enjoy riding my test and to appreciate every moment of riding my incredible pony.
We set off on Friday afternoon travelling in convoy with Sarah Oakden and got the horses settled into their stables. At heart I’m still a professional groom and I love nothing more than staying away with horses at a competition, making sure they are settled and comfy and getting to spend quality time playing with my pony!
Friday night ‘might’ have involved a few glasses of wine before hitting the sack ready for our test on Saturday afternoon.
Boom!
At the bigger British Dressage competitions you are allowed to take your horse in for an arena walk to give them a chance to see the arena, white boards, judges huts and all the banners and flags that are normally there to cause carnage!
These walks are always on in the early mornings before the competition gets started and everyone has to walk round on a long rein in the same direction. At some point the steward tells everyone to change the rein and if you want to see a bit of fun then this is the bit to watch. It’s usually fine until one goes boom and then it’s like a domino effect… BOOM!
Thankfully Splash is quite sensible compared to a lot of these hot-blooded dressage horses ridden by the professionals, but I still had my trusty neck strap on just in case! After the arena walk I worked him in the indoor for 20 minutes as we weren’t on until later that afternoon.
Mission Accomplished
I’ve been having some weird dreams lately about being so late for something that I end up missing it and in my dreams no matter how hard I try nothing gets me there in time. So I made sure I planned all my timings and worked backwards so that I didn’t feel like I was rushing.
Splash warmed up beautifully and I headed down feeling confident and ready to go. The test itself went really well, there were a couple of small mistakes but in jumping terms I would say we had a clear round. Splash is brilliant with his walk/canter/walk transitions but in this test we have both simple changes and canter/trot/canter transitions and I knew this is where he might get a bit confused if I wasn’t super clear with my aids. He nailed both and I came out with a huge smile on my face having loved every minute of it… mission accomplished!
We finished the day on 68% in 8th place out of a class of 15. The marks were all quite tight at the top with 5 of us bunched together on 68%.. so not quite the mark that we needed to be in with a chance of a wild card but still a performance I am really proud of.
I also discovered afterwards that this result has put us out of Novice Silver classes, so if we were to drop back down to Novice we would be in with the big boys (and girls) so another indication of how much progress we are making.
Fun and Progress!
And this is what I’m going to focus on moving forwards… fun and progress. If we are achieving both of these then happy days!
Saturday night was spent drinking more wine safe in the knowledge that I didn’t have to ride on Sunday and could enjoy playing at being a groom again for Sarah’s two horses who by the way smashed their tests. We are now keeping everything crossed that she gets a wild card for the Medium Silver Championships on her very special pony Kerrishill Zeus.
With the last test done we packed up the ponies and headed home, tired but very happy and proud of my boy. So here’s to more fun and more progress, I’m super excited to see what the next six months hold…
Till next time
Liz S x
Main Image by JUMA Photography
