PrintWell, we’ve been here a week, and I have to say it’s gone by so slowly and so quickly at the same time! Megan and I were driving home yesterday from Hartpury Horse Trials, and I turned down a horrible song on Radio 1 and asked, “Did we just do a three-star this weekend?” And she said, “Yup, actually this morning.”
That’s one of the cool things about England—an hour down the road you can run a three-star with William Fox-Pitt, Andrew Nicholson, Bettina Hoy, Mark Todd, and a few Americans you know as well, and be home in time for an early dinner!
I have to say I’m relieved this weekend is over and in the big picture we got what we needed, a good clean cross-country run. And I shook off the nerves and rust in the dressage and show jumping, and I have a very sound, happy horse today.
Tate arrived well but tired to Maizy Manor last Monday. By Thursday he began to get a little spring back in his step, only to be put on the lorry at 6 a.m. to travel to another new place with new horses. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but Tate was actually very good in the dressage warm-up. But I found myself without much of a warm-up plan. In all the fuss of actually getting to England, then getting a lift to the competition, I actually missed a chance to sit down and plan out my dressage warm-up, as well as running through the test a few times to get familiar with it.
I knew the test and the moves in it but had not actually run through it since early this spring. So I found myself panicked in the warm-up that I was going to forget my test. Since Tate was being good, I wasted half my warm-up watching the rides before me making sure I new where I was going, convinced I was going to forget... Not ideal prep for a good test.
Tate was very well behaved but a bit flat, and I didn’t help since I was just working on getting through the movements, not actually making them seamless and smooth. We had a less then grand entrance when I asked for the halt from the canter lightly, and being that Tate was just a bit tired he kind of fell into the trot then walked into the halt—not a great first impression.
I had an accidental flying change in the counter canter, which I totally blame myself for, again just riding the line not the actual canter balance. All in all we both were just lacking in our confidence and maybe both a little jetlagged, but most importantly Tate didn’t have a bad experience in the ring, just a boring one!
After being furious with myself for not riding well I went and walked around the cross-country and I felt a bit overwhelmed, to be honest. I haven’t had a run on Tate since Rolex, and this track was SERIOUS! At the first water they threw in what course designers are calling “retro logs”—narrow logs that are toothpick width (I’m exaggerating, but really freakin’ thin) that are just ugly! There was a large upright retro log and then two strides to a big log pile into what looked like a deep pond, then left handed over a huge cascading active waterfall roll top... I was like, “I don’t feel so good...”
The course carried on like this, big questions that Tate just hasn’t seen before. Then there was the second water, think angled skinny cabin, one stride, retro log one and a half feet past the end of the bank, just hanging out there with one little twig of a tree in the middle. UGLY. It looked like something Bruce Davidson would have jumped back in the day, and we would be like “No way they would get away with that stuff now...” WRONG.
