A starry end to the eventing year
To bring you up to date – on 24th & 25th of November I competed at Woady Yallock Horse Trials, I swore I would never speak of this event again as it was definitely not my finest hour. Between the constant rain, no dry clothing and a fall out on the cross country it was one to forget! Jett performed extremely averagely in the dressage ring but we managed a fantastic show jumping round on the Sunday morning, going clear, so we were feeling confident running into the cross country. Jett was jumping awesome around the course until an awkward distance at the ditch and brush resulted in Jett ending up in the ditch itself with me on the other side, not a nice feeling, especially only three jumps from home. Unfortunately mistakes do happen and thankfully both horse and rider walked away perfectly fine, just a few scratches to their dignity.
This little accident didn’t leave us feeling to confident running into the Lakes & Craters 3 Day Event, but the preparation the week running in couldn’t have left me feeling any better about what had happened.
All good at the trot up
The last time I competed at Lakes was in 2010 with my previous horse Northern Sebastian, where we unfortunately ended up withdrawing on cross country, so I was super excited to be back again especially with Jett! The first trot up was on Thursday morning – accepted and following our dressage test that afternoon we were 4th on a score of 66.20% in a class of about 35. I couldn’t have been prouder of Jett’s efforts as our last few dressage tests have been so ordinary and I was so happy that Jett managed to keep it together!
On the Friday, the rest of the dressage was run for the other classes so Jett was given a light ride out on the hills to have a look at everything. The remainder of the day consisted of me walking the cross country course, the nerves were running high, this was definitely the most challenging course Jett and I had been faced with throughout this year.
Photo courtesy David Kelly
On Saturday morning I was literally feeling sick, the combination of this tough course and the technicality of Camperdown’s terrain reminded me that anything can happen when out on course but Jett had an awesome and really honest round coming in 11 seconds under time and moving us up into 3rd place going into the show jumping.
Sunday morning we had trot up, again we were accepted and were ready to take on the show jumping. Thanks to efforts of my mum, my amazing coach Robyn Brown and Jett’s awesome attitude we had a clear round to finish the week at Lakes & Craters 3 Day Event in 3rd place, finishing on our dressage score of 50.70. It was a good way to finish the year and I could not be more grateful to have such a beautiful willing horse.
Photo courtesy RTF Photography
Jett and I were only doing Introductory at the beginning of this year, so the hard work with him has really paid off and I cannot wait to see what next year will bring for us.
My goal of achieving a qualifier towards Melbourne 3DE 2014 was also attained at Lakes so this made it even more exciting.
Massive congratulations to everyone who competed not only at Lakes but throughout this entire year.
