It is over. Badminton for another year, Under The Clocks's first overseas competition, and my first competition in the northern hemisphere. I am up early the day after because I can't sleep for going over what we did and what went wrong but also what was right.
First the show jumping. It was bigger than Adelaide apparently because it was so close at the top. Ninja was feeling fine after the cross country. I walked the course with Warren and Prue. Nice distances and fences. I quite liked it and after cross country day I was more confident in my eye and rhythm.
The warm up was solid although I am always having to keep working on my position. Just before we went into the arena I noticed he slipped a little on the grass. I asked for the shoes to be checked and we found that both studs had come out of the off fore shoe. I had to go in anyway. We started to jump nicely in the big stadium. He was clear and feeling good over his fences until 7ABC. My plan was to ride forward through the corners and use the open space which became a balancing act with the slipping, studless shoe. He got to the treble nicely but didn't jump forward through the middle oxer and ended up too far from the last which he knocked firmly. After this he lost some confidence and I couldn't pick up the forward ride he needed with the stud missing with so many curved lines and we went from a lovely first half to four rails in the second half. Pretty disappointing.
We think that with the road riding to get to the gallops out here, the shoes just took more of a beating than usual. They are also aluminium shoes. Our farrier Will Collier has done such a good job improving Ninja's feet that we thought it safest to get him shod just prior to leaving and run with what we had rather than risk a new farrier over here.
The plan now is to see how well Ninja is and if he is as healthy as we think, we will do a three day event in Germany in June before bringing him home. Hopefully we can finish higher up the placing there.
In the mean time we have finished our first Badminton after travelling across the world for the task. Everybody involved should be congratulated and although we were not well placed there is much more we can improve on or that can be changed with the experience. I doubt we will finish so far down in a world's best field again.
Until next time,
Murray
