Event -Owners Blog from Witton-Second Day Washed out ..
Mistral was set to do dressage on Saturday along with Rare Hero and Whistling Willo had already done his Pre Novice Class by the time I arrived. He finished a creditable tenth leaving his owners pretty pleased and now heads back to Ayrshire for the winter, Trig Point and Freddy were set to do their Intermediate tests on Sunday but it wasn’t to be.
By this stage I had parked well away from the queue and wandered towards the lorry park via the dressage arena. It was taking people 55 minutes to get into the lorry park, and it was clear that the change of location, simply hadn’t worked and a churned up lorry park hadn’t been accounted for initially.
The picture (top) actually doesn’t do the state of the lorry park justice. It was actually far worse later, and the mud that is visible goes down a fair way.
The Dressage surface was clearly better than that at Aske, with grass a lot shorter, but that was where the lorry park had been in prior years. A rethink may be needed.
The show jumping was clearly cutting up though I have seen worse this season, and the Cross Country also looked a bit battered on the Pre Novice and Novice courses, but the Intermediate and Advanced looked a very fair course and would have certainly suited Mistral. It was hard to know how it would have cut up on the Sunday, but I was pleasantly surprised on the Saturday pm about the challenge it offered on my first visit.
With the tricky situation in the Lorry park and the large number of horse in the dressage area it wasn’t possible to lunge Mistral or to have his normal three day preparation.
One feared for the test when he started to play up on his way to the arean. Meanwhile one whole side of the dressage arena border blew over in the high wind and rain as the previous rider was doing his test. Fortunately for Oliver Townend his horse Good Enough, was going down the far side, and came away with a 32.9. As Nicky said to Les Smith, who was judging, before the test started. If that happened to Mistral he would probably have been in the next County. He was a bit fresh in the test and lost concentration in the middle but came back to score a reasonable 37.9. I suspect there might be quite a lot of dressage training this winter.
Andrew Spalding along with the others had desperately been trying to keep the Advanced going for the next day, but health and safety consideration led to the Sunday being called off. Just at that moment a rider arrived to prepare for the next day from Southampton. The season in a nutshell. Rare Hero didn’t proceed with his dressage test and the season came to a deflating end. The blog started after Gatcombe 1 had been called off with Mistral having managed a Dressage and Show Jumping before snow, gales and everything else had taken hold, and so it has finished the same way.
The weather of course ironically is sunny.
There will be a final blog summarizing the season to follow at some stage with highlights and low points , and roll on 2009.
