ITS THIS WEEEEEEK!

Its Monday, the sun is shining and there is a little event happening in Gloucestershire THIS WEEK! How exciting. I have been sorely tempted to put my boys in the lorry and leave them there in bubble wrap and cotton wool with hypo allergenic duct tape until Wednesday but have decided against, just! Since putting pesky Hambleden behind me I had a super week starting with a hugely exciting 5yr old 'Carlifax' doing his first intro at Milton Keynes, 27 double clear. He is owned by Willy Do's owners the wonderful Greenlees family and we all agreed that score would do nicely this weekend as well. I had two super days dressage training with Andrew Fletcher on Wednesday and Thursday at Ann & Nigel Taylor's fantastic Aston le Walls followed by jumping a couple of more technical XC fences with Nigel following my virtual Badminton course walk. I have to say Luke and I both needed the tune up, too much dressage can be damaging to one's brain I think! Friday we did our last real 'piece of work' at Adrian Smith's gallops before enjoying a reasonably leisurely Saturday of hacking and stretching at home. Yesterday I took Luke and Willy to do dressage only at Withington. This proved a worthwhile exercise with Willy scoring 26 in the 3* test and leading a competitive section, Luke did a presentable test but there's room for improvement. I took their stable mate Sprout who did a very respectable test, one down (pilot error) and a fab XC round a reasonably testing track to take 10th in the Advanced. A very satisfactory day. We were glued to our FEI TV screens all evening to watch the Rolex Kentucky action unfold. What magical drama and excitement. I personally think its incredibly good for our sport to have a duel of such epic proportions. William FP's dressage on Chilli Morning was an inspiration and Andrew's two jumping rounds were as close to flawless as we could hope to witness. Next week is going to be just AMAZING.

A Hambleden full of hiccups

A Habmleden full of hiccups was about the size of my weekend! With 6 rides at this stunning venue I managed 6 reasonable but not dazzling tests, four show jumping clears and two with just 4 faults and ONLY 2 XC clears. Seriously frustrating blips on all those in contention. I guess I have to put it down in the great book of life under the chapter of experience...experiences NOT TO BE REPEATED! These lovely photos from Point Two and Tim Wilkinson taken at a happier moments of my pesky weekend: With 3 alarms pre 4am this weekend, and each day finishing with rides on my precious Badminton boys at home post 6pm I was mighty relieved to only wake at 6am this morning with a lovely trip up the gallops on Luke and Willy to look forward to. They smoked up the hill at Wendover and gave me a real boost. This is the start of a new week and we have huge excitements ahead. Tomorrow they will have a hack and do some stretching work in the school in readiness for 2 days dressage with Andrew Fletcher and a canter and jump on Friday with Withington to look forward to on Sunday. The realization is dawning that the great event is now only days not weeks away, and I am utterly determined to enjoy every step. I am very much there to do a job and produce my very best with firm goals for each phase, but its a poor show if I can't make sure I appreciate just how lucky I am to be in the position of having 2 horses to take to my very first Mitsubishi Motors Badminton.

Blustery Belton

Well Belton was a show of two halves...a really rather rubbishy Friday, and a magical Saturday and hugely satisfying Sunday. On Friday Dippy did by far his best test and a super clear XC but marred this with a dramatic spook at a very unscary photographer resulting in 8 faults. Chance did a super test, clear SJ and blitzed the XC to finish only 9 seconds over WITH A STOP. Seriously frustrating last minute change of heart at the coffin and he would have been second! Jackpot then decided to make me look like a total muppet experimenting with a snaffle in the 3* dressage with disastrous consequences. He ran away and we were last out of 113!! Thankfully Sprout rescued us on Saturday with a thrilling 2nd in a hot OI to none other than WFP himself on Cool Mountain. Sprout I believe was the only horse all day to finish on his dressage score, and it was his best test for a long while to boot. Jackpot equally redeemed himself with a super days jumping on Sunday. A pesky 4 faults in the middle of the treble two from home, but lovely clear all the direct routes XC. We seem to have the brakes sorted with just a few more runs needed to smooth out the round as we get to know each other better, I can't wait as The Bullman's and I have decided that he should join Sprout and The Sprout's in Tattersalls at the end of next month. Exciting times ahead. We are now full steam ahead for Hambleden with 8 this weekend between Fran and I, then MK on Tuesday for baby Carl and baby Stiker's BE debut, then the three big boys at Withington, with no XC for Willy and Luke as they hopefully set sail for sunny Gloucestershire on the following Wednesday.

Breezy Burnham Market

Burnham Market was extremely chilly but the run was hugely welcome after cancellations at Swalcliffe, Gatcombe and Somerly. We took Rio for her first 'away game' in the BE100. One of her lovely owners Jenny Burrall is a Burnham Market local. She and the rest of the syndicate were in fine form and despite taking fright at a leaf in the dressage she scored a respectable 36 followed by a very grown up double clear. Both my 2* boys are heading home with dressage practise at the top of their priority list!! Willy Do and Luke had their final run before Badminton. Both did reasonable tests, there is always room for improvement but 44 and 45 in the 3* were presentable marks! Willy then went on to put in a really confident and strong clear in both SJ and XC which put us in 10th in a hugely competitive field so I was over the moon with him. Luke unfortunately was wildly excited and as our team coach Luis Alvarez so succinctly put it...I don't think his mind was connecting with his body! He had 3 down in the show jumping, unable to contain his exuberance, but made up for it with a storming clear XC. So we are now balancing the fine line between having these two Badminton boys super fit, happy and healthy for the next four weeks and counting! Sprout, Jackpot, Chance, and Dippy now head to Belton this weekend, followed by Hambleden, Milton Keynes and Withington before YOU KNOW WHERE!!!!! Pressure's on!

Tinseltown

Well its hard to believe that 2013 started off as 2012 spent most of its days...enduring a deluge! The poor Tweseldown organisers and team had made an enormous effort with a fantastic new course around the old racecourse and the heavens did their very best to ruin it! I was extremely lucky to run all 7 of the horses I had entered. In general they were incredibly big for their boots between the white boards. Two notable Badminton entrants being the very worst of my gang!! That said 7 lovely XC clears and good efforts from them all in testing show jumping conditions almost made up for their poor performances in the first phase. The three boys who did try hard were rewarded with ribbons..Fran came 7th in the N on Lil, of mine Dippy came 2nd in the ON, Harry 7th in the N and Gangsta 8th in the OI. This lovely picture by Uptown eventing of a smiley jockey after riding the lovely Gangsta for the Scouller family. He has very sadly now been sold and we wish his new owners every success with this one in a trillion pony. After a busy week with Aston Monday with 5, squad training Tuesday with 7 (attached video of Jackpot http://youtu.be/S7sS_RktdTw ..fastest time of the day!), test riding wednesday with 5, Tweseldown Thursday and Friday with 8 between us, we were then lucky enough to enjoy a quiet weekend at home drying out. Rather sadly Swalcliffe was cancelled this weekend but we're very much looking forward to Gatcombe next with 6.

and so it begins....!!

The 2013 season has officially started. Fran and I took 5 to Aston UA yesterday and although we didn't come home laden with ribbons it was a glorious sunny day and jolly nice to be out and about doing an actual event again. The clever organisers Ann & Nigel did an incredible job as always with the ground and got through squillions of entries to give us all that important start to the year. Thank you Taylor family! Fran had her first ride on Master Rowan who did a super test and lovely double clear to finish in 9th. She jumped a beautiful double clear on Lil but she was one of a number to find dressage over the hedge from XC finish too much to bear! I had my first run on Dippyparflam and Whirlwind for the Peace Family. Their dressages were best left undiscussed, but both jumped beautifully. The Rio Syndicate's Rio de Reve had her first ever eventing start for an immaculate test of 28, clear SJ and a rather green XC round with a couple of stops at the water. She is a mega talent who lacks mileage but watch this space for her exciting future. Its been a bonkers busy week with 5 dressage lessons from Andrew Fletcher on Friday, XC schooling 6 at Boomerang on Saturday, see picture of India Wishart's lovely 7yr old The Master's Harry who i'm riding at Tweseldown while India recovers from an injury. We then had 5 at Aston, jumped 7 with Spanish wonder coach Luis Alvarez Cevera today, running through tests with Gill on 7 tomorrow, running 4 at Tweseldown on Thursday and a further 4 on Friday at Tweseldown. This time of year is so exciting with masses to look forward to but with 17 horses to get XC schooled, galloping fit, dressage practised, rounds of show jumps practised etc etc etc in shorter than ideal days its a busy old time! Here goes though, its what we've all been waiting for...2013 LETS GO!

2013 in earnest... So our year on Team NZ began in earnest this week with 2 days training with Luis Alvarez at Bruno and Dominique's incredible facility near Wootton Basset. Firstly it was a great honour to be named on the High Performance Program with some exhaulted super stars of our sport Mark Todd, Caroline Powell, Andrew Nicholson, Jock Paget, Jonelle Richards and Clarke Johnstone. Look out the world, TEAM NZ IS GOING FOR GOLD! http://www.nzequestrian.org.nz/Article.aspx?id=7116&Mode=1 for the full report. I was ridiculously lucky to be able to take no fewer than 10 horses to train with Luis and without exeption they all learned plenty from their session, as did I...x 10!! The first entries are in now, and it is with huge excitement and eager anticipation that I look forward to 2013. I have a great deal of determination to make it a REALLY GOOD YEAR, and hope you'll enjoy the journey with me.