Scotts of Thrapston

A beautiful red rosette

Posted on 16. Jun, 2010 by Janet in Janet Hammond, Rider Development Programme

I had an enjoyable and confidence-building lesson last Wednesday. Anna built a short course, and gradually increased the height until we finished at 1.05m. Tara was jumping really well, and with only one knock down the entire session, we finished on a good note and felt well prepared for the weekend.

My competition was a combined training class at Wing Jumping and Dressage Centre, with the BE101 dressage test followed by show jumping at 90cm.

Tara felt rather tense in the warm up, but I concentrated on transitions and some leg yielding to help her soften, and she gradually started to relax.

And at last everything seemed to come together at the right time.

Our test went really well, with some particularly lovely moments especially in the trot work. We actually scored a 9 for our halt and immobility at C! I’ve never scored a 9 before, so that felt like a huge milestone!

We finished on 30 penalties (that is a score of 70%), which is the highest I have ever achieved on Tara.

After a quick tack change, and warm up over the jumps, we went forward to the show jumping. Tara felt fantastic, and gave me a lovely clear round, ensuring we finished on our dressage score of 30.

When the results were announced I was absolutely thrilled to find out that not only had we produced a good performance it was also a winning one! A beautiful red rosette (the 9 year old girl’s love of rosettes never quite goes away!) and a £15 voucher, and qualification to their championship in October.

It was also possible to jump any of the combined training courses as a clear round so I decided to go round the 1.0m course. Tara was very good but we had an unlucky pole down – I allowed her to run on from a spread to an upright and she just got too close. But good experience for me, and great to have the opportunity to jump around another course.

Wing Jumping and Dressage Centre is a warm and welcoming venue with excellent facilities, and real emphasis on helping and supporting the competitors. They have recently re-opened the centre and are running a number of competitions (dressage, show jumping and combined training) throughout the summer, with championships in all areas scheduled for the autumn.

I am now looking forward to a specially organised session with Nick Turner on Wednesday 16th June, with particular emphasis on pace and speed across country (I will beat those time penalties!). A huge thank you to Sara Tusting at Carlton Cross Country for helping to fix this up.

Tags: Nick Turner, Wing Jumping and Dressage Centre