18-year-old Georgia Bartlett may be heading into her A’ level exams this week but in the past few days she passed a test of another sort to win the 2019 NAF British Eventing Junior Championship, held during the Fairfax & Favor Rockingham International Horse Trials
The Championship took place at CCI3*-S level as part of the Section C and Georgia, riding her 13-year-old Selle Francais gelding Spano De Nazca, took third place overall to win the NAF British Junior title on a score of 30.6 behind two very experienced competitors in the Open competition, Piggy French and Kitty King
21 riders started the Junior Championship and it was Molly Faulkner riding her mother’s Classic Affair who led after the dressage on Saturday. Molly and Classic Affair scored a very good 26.6 and show jumped clear to lead heading into the cross country phase but this was Spano De Nazca’s favourite phase and he ate up the cross country for Georgia to take the lead.
Molly Faulkner and Classic Affair, leaders after the first two phases
Only two riders produced a double clear cross country round from the huge class (Kitty King on Cristal Fontaine and Lucy Robinson on Tiger Lily XX) but Georgia added just 0.4 time penalties to her dressage score of 30.2 for the next fastest time on a course which caused plenty of problems
Milo Kennedy and Moher Prince
Georgia and Spano De Nazca were part of the British team that won silver at the 2018 European Junior Championships in Fontainebleau but this is their first win at this level. Molly Faulkner and Classic Affair finished in second place on a score of 35.8 and Milo Kennedy riding Moher Prince was third on 36.8
Georgia Bartlett
Georgia and Spano De Nazca, 2019 NAF British Junior Champions
