I was very much looking forward to this event as I knew the XC course would suit Savs to a T, and I was really hoping it would be a good confidence boost for her before I stepped her up to 90 next week. Walking the course I was quietly confident, but was glad the weather had cooled down slightly for her!
She was very tense warming up for the dressage (although I know at least half of that was my own stress that I cannot seem to get a hold of) and she stayed that way pretty much throughout the test, although she did relax for a couple of quite nice moments. I was slightly disappointed with how it went as she'd run though it brilliantly the night before, but I knew this was probably completely me so at least it's something to work on. We ended up with a score of 34.6, which was actually a lot better than I'd been expecting, (and her best test yet) consisting of mainly 7's and one very surprising 8! Our canter let us down again, but this is expected and is slowly but surely improving.
I've learnt for the SJ, Savs doesn't need much warming up and as she's still not that fit it's better to conserve her energy for the XC. A quick canter on each rein to get her moving and thinking forwards, a pop of each warm up fence and we were ready. There were quite a few spooky fences within the course, so my concern was that if let her flatten too much into them but I needn't have worried, she didn't look at a single filler and was much more concerned about the commentators box right outside. I was extremely pleased with how she jumped, everything was flowing much better and she jumped everything out of her stride. Unfortunately I let her get slightly unbalanced around a corner resulting in her tripping a little, meaning we just had the first part of the double down.
Again for the XC, Savs doesn't need a huge warm up so I just let her calmly pop the couple of warm up fences before walking her around until our time. Even after doing just two events, she has obviously clocked what a start box is - the horse I was sat on in the warm up and the one I was sat on outside the warm up were completely different!
She absolutely rocketed out of the start box with little encouragement which was great, and flew the first 5 fences like they were nothing. Fence number 6 was two logs either side of a mound which I thought she might have a look at as well as fence 7 which was a drop fence with a brush on top. Once again my worries were proved completely pointless and she skipped over them and the rest of the course brilliantly. We finished clear inside the time, and she still felt full of running - our fitness training is obviously paying off!
I was absolutely over the moon with how she jumped, overall we finished just outside of the top ten sitting in 11th place- without that pole we would have been about 7th. The whole point was to give a confident round before I run her at her first 90 and we definitely achieved that. On wards to Bovington on the 2nd June!
Commentaires