Well, my first 1* very exciting stuff! I was always expecting it to go badly because our dressage and sj recently has completely gone to pot and I had just spent two weeks on holiday in the Alps.

However, he was superb in the dressage. I was incredibly pleased with him, he was soft through the poll pretty much throughout the test and he was very pleasant.  I wasn’t sure whether to wear my top hat and tails or not because A) its only CIC* and B) our dressage isn’t great! But Laura kicked me up the arse and told me to stop fussing and wear them, so I did. And I don’t think we looked out of place at all. He didn’t do anything wrong in the test and he actually did a rein back OMG, and he didn’t resist. Both his counter canters were good. He did a reasonable medium trot throughout the huge long diagonal and his extended walk was good. We got a 7 from one judge for it!!! I knew the mark wouldn’t be good though as he is very long and doesn’t use himself from behind yet. And sure enough 67.5- not good. But very happy with his way of going!

Photos from the dressage warm up (click to enlarge)

In the test:

Trot up was fine no problems there. YAY!

Right onto the next day and the dreaded show jumping! It wasn’t a very nice course, it was VERY long, 11 jumps with a double and a treble, also a lot was downhill or uphill on long strides. It was also fairly big and square, although in the photos my huge beat of a horse dwarfs it so it looks quite small!!!! He wasn’t warming up well at all and was knocking almost everything down. Didn’t exactly fill me with confidence. However I was seeing reasonable strides which recently has been our downfall ( I keep missing and making him stop). So did one well, two was nice, flew 3, fab through the double at four. Came around to five, downhill upright and got a bit close so that came down. Good over 6, round to the treble at 7 which he was foot perfect through. So all good up till here. Then everything went very very wrong. We got a bit under 8 and he was a bit lazy, that came down, then a bit flat over 9 and that came down, then I forgot it was a short three strides to 10 and got right underneath and he had no help from me, and that came down, then the last, fence 11 we drifted to the right and I took the wing with my leg. So FIVE down, TWENTY penalties. Needless to say I was pretty devastated by this. The last four jumps down! It had been going so well up till 8 with just the one fence down and then it all went badly wrong very quickly :(

Photos (click to enlarge)

Onto the cross country, well it started to rain very heavily and I ended up going XC in the worst conditions, over fences 1, 2, 3 and 4 I was struggling to see, the visibility was awful! Flew 1, 2 and 3 downhill to the three part skinny on a curve combination. My reins were very slippy and he is quite headstrong over the first 4/5 fences so our approach was interesting! But he was superb through it. Flew the hedge at 5, downhill (again breaking issues with the rain etc) to 6ab the very large drop to HUGE skinny log. (It looks tiny in photos,  like seriously tiny, but it’s actually really quite large!!) He flew off the step really well and popped over the log beautifully. We didn’t have a very good stride to the triple bar and we launched off a long one,,opps. Popped through the coffin well and galloped on over the steeplechase fence as 9, flew the ditch rail at 10 and down onto the very upright three horseshoes on a curve. We got very underneath the first and hit it hard and corkscrewed in the air. And then got fairly close to the other two and gave them a tap too. Kicked on up the hill and launched over a large hedge. Down to another horseshoe curve to a skinny barrel. I slowed right down on the turn to the barrel as it was slippy and he’s not very easy to turn. Popped that well and then 180 degrees back where we came from and up to do the double to corners. They were quite big and wide, and I wanted a nice shot in, that didn’t happen and I wasn’t very decisive about my take off point, so he launched over the first from quite a long way out. However it did then mean the tight striding to the 2nd one wasn’t so tight and we popped out very well. Even if my reins were 10 yards long! Galloped down to the pheasant feeder and then onto the water. Popped through there and then up the hill and flew the spread and last, finished 3 seconds inside the time and thoroughly wet. So finished on a good note. Overall fairly pleased, very happy with the dressage and XC and happy with the first half of show jumping, we will just have to forget the rest happened and not look at our record!!!

So big thanks to my groom (mum) my photographer (my brother) and of course Laura who drove all the way out here to support me! Thankies!!!!!!!!

We ended up 30/54 so just over half way, so considering the SJ, not too bad/disgraceful. Had we pulled a double clear out the bag (which at one point around April/may time could have been possible) we would have been placed (13th) and got two points. So could have been worse for first 1* if we forget the sj!!!