It’s been a busy, hot day at Lynton, venue for the NSW State Eventing Championships but given the sort of weather than can often hit this popular event today really wasn’t too bad.
“I don’t think I have ever sat on top of this hill during the event and not been blown away,” said Geordie Kennedy who was out jump judging this afternoon “so I’m certainly not complaining about the weather today.”
The riders in the CCI3* class had to wait until late in the afternoon before they got to run round their cross country course and with only one withdrawal (from Robert Palm) prior to the start of cross country a class of seven set off on their challenging 10 minute track.
“Although the committee have done what they could with the ground it was still really hard so I decided to withdraw my 3* horse Visual Laughter,” explained Rob. He’s only eight and it really didn’t matter if I did my CCI3* here or at Sydney next year, so I opted to leave it until next year. I know quite a few of the other riders needed this CCI3* as a qualification for Adelaide 4* so they were looking at things from a different angle.”
Tim and Lord Limmerick over the second brush flyer
Tim Boland was first horse out in the CCI3* having lead the class and although Lord Limmerick certainly showed a few green moments he kept going and will hopefully have learnt from the experience. However when the scores went up it showed Tim as eliminated. “There was a problem at the double of apexes,” said Tim. “Apparently not all the parts of the horse that have to go through the flags, went through the flags, but I didn’t hear the jump judge shout ‘refusal’ and I wasn’t pulled up so I kept on going. It’s a shame we have an ‘E’ next to our name but at the same time we actually jumped round the whole course so I’m pretty happy with that. He’s a horse I think a lot of and now I will just take him to the 2* in Adelaide and he’ll go overseas with me next year.”
All the riders in the CCI3* track took it easy on the hard going but not so Bella Mowbray and Star Vision who blitzed round the course finishing just one second over the optimum time to take a substantial lead of around 16 penalties ahead of second placed KL Kismet ridden by Elizabeth Lowery. Stuart Tinney and Sydney picked up 18 time penalties to finish third going into tomorrow's show jumping phase.
At the end of dressage Stuart Tinney was still in the lead of the CIC3* on Pluto Mio and you can take a look at his test below.
We caught up with Stuart after his cross country on Sydney in the CCI3* to find out how he went and also grabbed a few words with course designer/builder Neil Kennedy.
Sam Lyle and Adelaide Hill in the CIC3*
The other interesting story in the CIC3* was the plan ‘A, B and C’ of Adelaide Hill. As we reported in Christine Bates' last blog, after she had damaged a finger she decided to hand the ride on Adelaide Hill to Sam Lyle. Because Sam isn’t qualified to ride Adelaide Hill in the Australian International 3DE CCI4* Christine had asked Kevin McNab to ride him in the 4*. Now, because of the current situation regarding ‘positive samples’ from Kevin’s horse in the UK, and his subsequent suspension Christine made a quick trip to see her surgeon. “I told him there had a been a change of plan and I had to be able to use this finger sooner, rather than later,” said Christine. “I’ve got five weeks to get fit to ride at Adelaide so we’ll just have to see how we go. In the meantime Sam is doing a great job (the pair are lying third after dressage).”
Isabel English, with smoke haze in the background, on her way to a great clear round in the CCI*
The CCI* class, who also ran cross country today, produced an interesting scoreboard with only three of the eight starters coming home with scores on the board. Those three riders all managed to go clear and under time, which saw dressage leader, Isabel English, remain her top placing, as did second placed Emily Dockray and Under Contract. Jack Hayden rode a lovely round on Sandhills Bounce to pull up from seventh to third. Two riders, Usman Khan and Jessamy Walsh were both eliminated on cross country after jumping the wrong fence. It turned out that both riders hadn’t walked the course properly and had mistakenly walked some of the CIC* instead of their own. The other three riders all opted to retire after suffering problems at various fences.
The TD explains to Jessamy Walsh that she has jumped the wrong fence
Tim Boland leads the CIC2* class after dressage and show jumping on Napoleon having taken pole position from dressage leader Jack Hayden riding Jaybee Calypso who took two rails down. Having joked with Judy Clarke earlier in the day about running out of things to say about her consistent winning dressage tests with Diablito I have to report that she didn’t lead the dressage at Lynton. “It was a shocker of a test,” said Judy, who scored 48.9 but with a clear show jumping round the pair are now placed third and only 0.3 penalties behind second placed Rachel Lee riding Baillieu.
Fresh from his blitz around the Exhibition Eventing class at Wallaby Hill, Shane Rose and Contenda have switched back to ‘real’ eventing mode and are leading the Alltech CIC* ahead of Tallara Barwick and Copabella Verdi.
Eleanor Osborne (above), one of the riders in the Alltech Equine Advantage Event Series, jumps Highborne Rocker in the CIC* class.
