Sweden's Amanda Andersson presents Jersey during the 1st Horse Inspection for Young Riders
An Eventful Life is filming all competitors on cross country at
2022 FEI European Eventing Championships for Junior & Young Riders
The First Horse Inspection for the FEI Eventing European Championships for Young Riders and Juniors took place Hartpury College and University, a venue renowned as ‘the place’ for young people in search of equine knowledge through its educational programmes.
This week however the focus on excellence will result in the handing out of European medals and Championship crowns, with the Team Dressage Champions already having been decided on Wednesday when Germany took Team Gold in both the FEI Dressage European Championship for Juniors and Young Riders and Great Britain won a historic bronze medal in the Junior Team competition (full results here)
The trot up for the FEI Eventing European Championships for Young Riders and Juniors also got underway at Hartpury on Wednesday, taking place in the well-known indoor arena near the stables.
60 horses presented in the Junior Championship (CH-EU-J-CCI2*-L) and 48 in the Young Rider Championship (CH-EU-Y-CCI3*-L), with the horses being presented down the side of the arena.
It was great to see that many of the Juniors wore their helmets to trot up, although the Swedes had a different and prettier form of head attire, wearing fabulous blue and yellow ribbons in their hair.
The Netherland's Sterre van Houte presents Crossborder Radar Love during the 1st Horse Inspection for Juniors (above) and Italy's Matteo Orlandi presents Quality In Time during the 1st Horse Inspection for Young Riders (below)
Fewer of the Young Riders wore helmets but three of the German young riders (Calvin Bockmann, Jana Lehmkuhl and Libussa Lubbeke) wore uniform and looked immaculate. Three Junior riders were sent to the holding box but subsequently accepted upon presenting again - Lander van den Broeck (BEL) Danos De Grece (FRA) and Hanna Jensen (GER)
Matteo Orlandi also wore uniform, also handsome, and was asked to trot twice (which may have been simply because he looked so good!)
Sweden’s Wynja Eriksdotter Rubin was one Young Rider sent to the Hold Box and sadly was not allowed to continue. But mostly it was an uneventful Inspection with lots of really lovely looking horses, a few junior entries that looked like they might be verging on the pony side and the friskiest horse award went to Spain’s Young Rider entry Indiana Revolution.
Friskiest Horse Award for Antonio Delgado Rozas presenting Indiana Revolution
It is really fun to be at a Championship again – a great warm-up for the big one at Pratoni in September - and see all the teams walking the course together, supporting each other at the Inspection and also lots of national pride being displayed by way of some creative quarter marks!
Patriotic quarter marks for Isabelle Cook's Mexican Law during the 1st Horse Inspection for Juniors
Article by Samantha Clark
We’ll be back with full reports each day in our Subscriber-only content and check out our full gallery of photos by Libby Law here
