Winners at Sydney - even if it was combined training
This year has started flying along and yes I’m struggling to keep up with everything going on. The competition season started with some great results from Mustang and I. First was the Combined Training at Wallaby Hill and just being at WH for the weekend is like a holiday. Beautiful, relaxing, well organised, happy event - and it is all the more happier when you go home a WINNER! Woohooo!
We were lucky enough to return to Wallaby Hill the following weekend for little more serious matters of training with the High Performance. We spent some time nutting out a plan towards WEG and the following Olympics along with training to improve our performance, keeping competitive against the rest of the world.
In our next performance at Sydney we pulled out our personal best dressage score all in the pouring rain. And pouring rain is an understatement! Imagine, just as I start cantering around the swimming pool arena it starts to rain again so I’m wet. By the time I've entered and trying to do medium trot across the diagonal the rain is horizontal and funnelling down between my saddle and my jodhpurs so fast there is no friction. Yeehhhhaaaa I’m sure that wet and wild is not as fun as that! I got off, poured 20ml of water out of my boots and carried on the rest of the day very soaked.
As it turned out cross country was cancelled and I became the Combined Training Queen - winning two in a row!
I love a country wedding where the pets come too!
The next exciting thing to happen was my best friend's wedding over Easter. Mustang and I made the 10hr drive home to Balranald for two weeks. It was a great country wedding where there were countless hours spent on home made decorations with 70% of the town contributing to some part of the festival. It was a wonderful day, getting hair, makeup and nails done and into our dresses but it wouldn't be right not to ride a horse down the aisle! So we got the bride up on a horse side-saddle and led the way down to the wedding. A traditional wedding in Balranald has 150 invited friends and family and 100 local onlookers who just want to have a geezer for entertainment. We had a great time and I was very lucky to be part of such a beautiful day.
Tony and I felt very lucky to be involved with such a lovely day
There is never a dull moment out in the country though, especially when we thought it would be a good idea to take the young horses out on a quite family ride. Inevitably it didn't go so quietly. I went to get Monyana in for Tony to have a nice ride on but he must have had an impulse back to his younger breaking in days and jumped on Sky (Monyana's sister). Needless to say they were both in for an exhilarating ride that would have scored well for a hard fought eight seconds in the appropriate Rodeo arena!! Leaving battered and bruised we gave it our all and had a great time.
I had a great ride at Albury
Photo: Janelle Christopher
At Albury we had our game face back on and Mustang did a lovely test but the pressure was on being the final event before Trans Tasman selection and the big guns were out to play. Cross country was amazing, Mustang was fabulous, it was the most fun I have had ever on cross country.
We had an unusual couple of rails in the show jumping with some time penalties which wasn't a strong finish but over all it was a good performance in the lead up to Sydney three day event.
This is all that is required for the drive home from Albury
Getting the phone call that I have been added to the short list for the Trans Tasman is very exciting (and now on the team!). Wearing the green and gold in your home country is an awesome thing! I think we will be a strong team this year and I’m keen to put my best foot forward at this competition.
The weekend proceeding Sydney 3DE I returned to one of my old pony club grounds at Deniliquin where the Pony Club Association Victoria is holding the Horse Trials State championships. It was cool to spend the weekend back at the grass roots level of eventing with kids as keen as mustard and dedicated parents all enjoying themselves and ponies who have been through the generations.
Happy eventing, aussie aussie aussie!
Em
