British Riding Clubs National Horse Trials Championships 5/6 August 2007 Offchurch
Click here for photos of the weekend
The first weekend in August saw our Novice Horse Trials Team travelling to Offchurch in Warwickshire for British Riding Clubs National Horse Trials Finals. The team qualified in monsoon conditions at Borde Hill back in June & consisted of Christine Hartfield & Jasper, Juliette Huckstep & Christine's Pigs Can Fly, Nicky Gurden with Jack & Liz Brennan-Jesson with Sue Ewins Fleetmead Factotum. 2 Original members who were in the qualifying team could not compete at the finals so Juliette & Liz stepped in as reserves, Liz having already qualified as an individual. The finals which are run, as a 2-day event nearly did not happen at all with the Offchurch Estate badly flooded with the summer rain & having seen the photos showing the flooding 2 weeks prior it seemed a miracle they could hold an event at all. The organisers worked very hard & with a change to short format & some re routing of the cross country course & the stabling being moved all was well. The new layout was much more compact than in previous years, something our legs did appreciated!!
Day 1 dawned sunny & bright & saw the dressage & show jumping, the Team all put in fantastic dressage performances Christine on 32.1, Liz on 24.7, Juliette also on 24.7 & Nicky on 50.5, Nicky’s horse is only 5 and is still learning that dressage is meant to be performed on 4 feet and that movements have to be performed at certain point (but his jumping makes up for this)! The Show Jumping for some reason had been causing all sorts of issues with fence 6 seeing lots of eliminations but needless to say 3 of our team all flew round clear & Liz just rolled 1 pole to add 4 penalties to her score. At the end of day 1 we were leading the team competition by 3 penalties, with Juliette & Liz leading their arenas & Chris being =2nd in hers.
We knew day 2 would not be a walk in the park as when you are leading there is only one way to go! The XC course at Offchurch is about as tough as you can make an Intro height course with lots of technical questions & undulating ground. The time is also very hard to get. The short format consisted of Phase A which was 18 minutes trot, followed by the 10-minute box & then the Cross Country Course. Christine lead us off and was flying round until the 2nd last, where as you galloped towards the stabling you had to do a sharp left & jump a skinny, Jasper decided he knew the way home & refused to turn earning a very (very) cross Christine 20 penalties. Nicky with young Jack & Liz with the more elderly Fleetmead Factotum both flew round clear 5 seconds under the time. Juliette was last out & was galloping round until what she describes as 'pilot error' lead to a silly stop in the middle of an offset double, but she managed to gather herself together & still got home under the time to give the team a good score.
When the final scores came out the team still finished a brilliant 4th (out of the 22 finalists), with Juliette 8th in her section & Liz having the great result of winning her section. Fleetmead Factotum was the oldest horse at the competition being 20 & has been placed or won here every time he competes. The Ardingly Team had a very enjoyable weekend even if we did not quite pull it off & have to say a big thank you to their support team, Bruce Leiper, Nicky/Josh & Toby Hill, Sue Ewins & Cliff Gurden.