Monday, 11 July 2011

BARBURY

Barbury Castle is possibly the nicest event... with the amazing settings, it is spectator friendly and the ground is perfect!
RAYEF was in the 120 strong CIC***... He was very excited to be out and thought he should just go straight around the XC! He took a lot of work to settle him down but luckily by the time his test was on Saturday afternoon, he was on brilliant form! He scored a 34.8 dressage and that put him in the lead from Pippa Funnell on a 36.4 and in 3rd was Emily Baldwin on a 40.2.
He showjumped brilliantly but in the main arena at Barbury you have to go up a bank, jump 2 fences and drop back down the bank, this unsettled him slightly so annoyingly he had the rail at the bottom of the bank... this was still good enough to keep him in the lead as Pippa and Emily both had a rail.
XC was in reverse order so it was a very long wait!
The time is always hard to get on the XC at Barbury and although I really wanted to win, I also wanted a sound horse and wasn't willing to risk a silly mistake by going crazily fast! RAYEF was fantastic and he added 6.8 time penalties which unfortunately cost us the win... we ended up in 3rd, still a great result and I really hope the senior selectors may just consider him for the European Championhips now... if not then we will be having a good crack at Burghley CCI****!

Results update...

Sorry I have been useless at keeping up to date with my diary so here is a quick run through on how the horses have been going in the past months.....

MINIMEE had a win in the Open Novoce at Withington Manor.

OUTWRAD BOUND and OBOS COOLEY both picked up 2nd placings in the BE100 sections at Hambleden.

OUTWARD BOUND jumped a lovely double clear to finish 4th in his first Novice at Aston Le Walls, MILLFIELD CONDESCEND and LONGBARN MAISIE both went well in the Novice to finish 3rd and 4th respectively on their sections.

We then had a trip across the water to Saumur, France. GINGER MAY KILLINGHURST gave me a fantastic ride XC adding a few time faults and just tipped the first fence SJ to finish in 12th place in the CCI***. NOBLE BESTMAN had juimped a brilliant double clear in the CIC** to finish in 18th place.

A very successful day at Pontispool saw OBOS COOLEY and BROOKFIELD BAKER STREET winning their BE100 sections and OUTWARD BOUND winning the Novice.

A trip up North to the lovely Bramham CCI*** Under 25 Championships with NOBLE BESTMAN was next.... He went very green in the atmosphere of the dressage and made a few mistakes to score 54.... he then jumped an awesome double clear round what was one of the strongest CCI*** tracks I have ever seen. He added just 4.8 time penalties to finish in 12th.... Not bad considering he was Pre-Novice last year!

At great Tew, OBOS COOLEY was 2nd in the BE100, MILLFIELD CONDESCEND was 7th and OUtWARD BOUND was 10th in their Novice sections.

The beautiful Salperton Park was the next event. Jason Houghton who owns RAYEF lives at Salperton so it was great the RAYEF had such a successful run on his home grounds! It was his first run back since Badminton and he was very excited! He did a flash test to score 22.2 in the dressage and jumped a steady double clear to finish 4the in the AI section. OUTWARD BOUND was 2nd in the Novice and OBOS COOLEY jumped a steady double clear in his first Novice.