Sunday the 1st of July dawned bright and breezy as the Colne Valley contingent made their way up to Poplar Park for the annual Area 14 One Day Event, hosted by Finn Valley Riding Club. This year we were well represented by a novice team of 4 riders (Kelly Cole, Alexis Landing, Michelle Oliver and Louise Allen), an individual novice rider Claire Akers, and two individual intermediate entrants Addie Akers and Lucy Browning-Smith.
Just to give you an idea of what they had let themselves in for, our novice riders were jumping 2'6"-2'9" for both showjumping and cross-country phases and our intermediates had to clear a substantial 3'3"!
Over now to Addie for her report on the day:-
We all had a lovely day and stayed dry as the weather was lovely! The novice team did us proud!
They all did good dressage tests and flew round the show jumping with only a few poles down
here and there. They were all terrified before the xc as it was well up to height and they were a true
novice team! But they did fab. The round of the day had to go to Louise who looked shaky at
the practice last week but on the day flew round like she had been doing it her whole life!! Very
pleased with her horse! Kelly also flew round despite this only being their 3rd attempt at xc and
by far the highest! Alexis went clear but had many time faults - must have had a picnic half way
round! and poor Michelle's horse was a little bugger and refused every fence at least once until she was
sent off at fence 5 for holding up proceedings! But again she rarely does xc so it gives her something to
work on. So the team did great! The time was very tight on the xc so we racked up many time
faults which put us out of the rosettes, but they were all pleased and had a great day.
Claire Akers, entered in the individual novice class, did an average dressage and went clear sj and xc but
again had time faults.
Lucy did a good dressage, had 2 down in sj and clear xc but again time faults - the xc times on the day were
silly and nearly everyone had time faults apart from those who had no regard for themselves or their horse
and whizzed round! Not sure if Lucy has qualified as individual results were not finalised on the day so will
wait to hear. Me and Basil shocked everyone by getting a fab dressage score of 31! and coming 2nd in our
class of 35 for this phase! We had one sj down and clear xc but again time faults! So probably
not placed because of these time faults - we were not built for speed! So a great day - would have been nice
to have had some more ground help as organising and tack changing 5 riders over just an hour and a half was
frantic and admittedly some were left to tack change etc alone because we did not have sufficient help.
However, that's what I love about eventing; the excitement of doing all the 3 things
in a day and the rushing about and quick warm ups - less time for nerves!
The best thing is the xc and I dont know how some of you live without it!!!!
Addie
Once again, our club members have given a good account of themselves in regional competition. Well done to all involved and many thanks to Addie for managing the teams and ensuring that everyone's day ran smoothly. It was somewhat disappointing that help on the ground was not more forthcoming; our riders do appreciate support when they are out representing us and we urge members to consider this to be just as important as competing itself. Please come out to encourage our teams; we would particularly recommend this as a way of finding out more about a discipline in which you do not normally participate and of meeting other club members.