After a few weekends on the sidelines, the Blog reappears with a report from the first day of two at Aske in North Yorkshire.
I was only there for 10 hours but there seems a large amount of ground to cover.
The only run that my horses have had since the last report at Hexham, was Trig Point’s third place in the six year old qualifier at Catton which is enough to get him to the final. His dressage of 28.6 had been followed by a clear round showjumping and 1.6 time faults Cross Country, which earned him 4 points.
All three were running, with Freddy Curtis and Mistral having their first outing since Houghton. Freddy was competing in the Novice Regional Final, Mistral in an intermediate, and Trig Point in a Novice. Rare Hero made up the fourth for the day with another four to follow on the Sunday.
It was an early start for everyone as we had about two hours driving to cope with, and wanted to be there before Freddy started with Dressage at 08.30. It was also due to be a late finish with Trig Point not completing Cross Country till after 5pm. Weather, predominantly cloudy, with the odd shower and sunny intervals.
The classes ranged from Open Intermediates, down to Pre Novices on Day One, with Novices and Pre- Novices on Day 2
I will tackle the Intermediates first, followed by the Novice regional Final and then the Novice, but first will give the initial impressions of the venue. Curates egg springs to mind but that isn’t necessarily perhaps the right wording.
The Location
This was the first time that I had been to Aske, and geographically is probably isnt the easiest location to work with, given the undulating terrain.
The cross country was spread over terrain that made viewing very reasonable, and one didn’t have to run around alike a total lunatic to see more than 50% of the fences.
The show jumping was set on probably one of the most undulating courses I have seen so far, and combined with the technical nature of the course building, was to stretch the intermediate field. The first five horses I saw came back with 12 faults, 20 , 24, Technical elimination, and 20. That gave me a clue that the showjumping was to have a critical role to play in the outcome, and if a horse wasn’t balanced or concentrating it would pay the price. Whether the challenge was too intense was being debated for some time amongst the various members of NBR Eventing. Adjustments were made for the Novice and Pre- Novice showjumping and with the BE Regional representative on hand certainly there were more expert people than me around to suggest changes if they were required
The dressage was also on what I might term sloping terrain. Perhaps one shouldn’t be too critical of that, but the grass had only literally just been cut (or topped) and was still too long, with the cuttings still lying. Combined with the sloping terrain it certainly could do with improvement for next year. The scores for all three horses in dressage belied the conditions though.
The programme had very little in it, and the map of the cross country course was supplied separately. I still think Hutton comes up with plaudits for its innovative programme for last year. The commentators as ever were excellent and with long gaps early in the day in the cross country schedule were challenged to keep the crowd entertained (and I was mentioned several times…). Trade stands were pretty limited.
Intermediate report
Having been uncooperative at Houghton, Mistral showed some better form to score a 34.3. There were elements that looked slightly unbalanced but he looked much less tense, and we were reasonably happy. Rare Hero (not mine) managed to stay in the arena (just ) and the 49.1 was a reflection of the high scores when he was performing and the couple of two’s when he was anything but….
Mistrals class was being led by Nicola Wilson after dressage on 30 points and there was certainly all to play for entering showjumping. However Mistral’s composure and concentration weren’t there, and after a fabulous display at Houghton, he came down to earth as many others did. The balance and concentration were at a premium, and in the two Intermediate sections of 66 horses there were 4 clear rounds, and 8 were eliminated entirely . The winner of the intermediate C actually won with four fences down in the Show Jumping which must be close to a first. Mistral had a disappointing four down, after Rare Hero had knocked down two.
For the cross country Nicky took it steadily on both horses. Despite his high dressage Rare hero came 11th in his class and Mistral had 30.4 time faults to come in 20th. A number of the fences were challenging and after Mistral’s rather hot headed performance at Houghton Nicky wanted to do more controlled round focusing on precision and it looks as though this was achieved. His next outing is at Auchinleck, in an Intermadiate but the real focus is on Gatcombe in the Novice Championships which is what we are working towards.
The Open Intermediate dressage arena was beside ours and it was interesting to see a number of Badminton Horses being put through their paces. Lenamore’s 23.8 was polished and his next move is probably the Olympics. What a contrast in surfaces. Charlotte Agnew’s Little Beau, and Rocket also put scores under 30, as did Caroline Powell, and Nicola Wilson. There were only three riders with clears in the Open Intermediate showjumping too, which indicated how tough the course was. The borders riders had three in the top six overall, with two for Caroline Powell and Charlotte Agnews Rocket coming sixth.
Novice Regional Final- run over Intermediate dressage and Showjumping and Novice Cross Country
The main aim for the trip down had been to see whether Freddy Curtis could join Mistral and Cherry Law, and qualify for the Novice Championships at Gatcombe at the beginning of August. From the initial list of entrants I thought there would be nine qualifiers, but after a couple of withdrawls this looked to have slipped to seven or eight. Freddy was first up in both in the dressage and showjumping as well which meant that he had to set a reasonable pace.
I was very pleased with the dressage. His 32.9 was a clear reflection of a good test and certainly the best he has done under our ownership. It is good to see the hard work paying off.
He was lying sixth after dressage, but the showjumping challenge was to come. A couple of changes were made to the course, removing one of the bogey fences but still leaving plenty to do. Freddy jumped much better than at Houghton and only had one pole down. The next dilemma was whether to go and watch Trig Point, or stay to watch the rest of the class, letting Nicky know what she needed to do for Cross country to qualify. We chose the latter.
The changes in course might have been made, but it was still proving tricky, and we hoped that Freddy would hold onto his position. As horses had one, two or more poles down we became more optimistic, and out of the 30 runners there were only three clear. Freddy had moved up to fifth, so was still well placed but there wasn’t a huge amount of room for manoevre. A clear inside the time would do the trick, I informed Nicky. He wasn’t first up but again it became clear that rounds inside the time were not at a premium. In fact there were only three. However although it looked as though he was going fairly fast he needed to be pulled back at various stages on the course and racked up 3.6 time faults. The scoring was ponderously slow, but eventually we worked out that Freddy was in seventh or eighth. He actually came in seventh and with eight qualifiers had done the job we asked. He also gets another point.
Novice
Trig Point is on a roll, and although I didn’t see it the dressage news had already filtered back that his test was as good as at Hexham, and sure enough a score of 23.2 put him comfortably at the head of section E. More changes to the Novice show Jumping with fences being lowered and more being taken out. Because of the undulations some of these were still pretty challenging, and I was very pleased when he only knocked one pole behind to have four faults. There were eight clears, but two of his closest in score had had a 23 and a 61, so he had 2.8 points leeway over those behind. We knew it was closer than at Hexham, but both agreed that we would allow him to go at the pace that suited him rather than chase for the win, with his development and confidence being more important. Looking at his round, he seemed to be traveling very smoothly, and he finished strongly, but I was surprised to discover he was three seconds faster than Freddy over the same course, his flowing style paid dividends as he romped home to win. Prize money £69.. Entry fee 57.. hmm
June has been a fantastic month for Trig Point and Nicky, and he has come away with two wins and a third. He now has 16 points, and has qualified for the six year old championships at Tweseldown in October. All testament to the hard work put in over a couple of years which is beginning to pay off. There is still very much a feet on the ground approach as one can see by the debate on the cross country time, as we have long term aims in mind.
Interesting to see how the BE Points are evolving for Nickys yard as the season progresses
Totals
Mistral 21
Cherry Law 19
Trig Point 16
Freddy Curtis 15
Season to date
Trig Point 16
Mistral 9
Cherry Law 5
Freddy Curtis 2
The thirty two points so far are the highest since 2004 for a season and we only are at the end of June. Good progress…
We had had a discussion about points at the end of April, but that is only one aspect of the horses recognition ad is sometimes not totally reflective of the developments plans of the yard. Missing runs because of being balloted out might also have had a role to play. Nevertheless very pleasing to see.
The Blogs return
Another couple of weeks on the sidelines followed by an edition from Auchinleck, with a potential two days, Gatcombe Festival of Eventing (certainly the Saturday), Thirlestane (though not sure about how many horse), Blair (Friday through Sunday) and Gatcombe again.
The arena and Stable work should have moved to the next phase by then, so we may welcome a quieter time in September.
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