Oakley Hunt (West) PPC: a win and 3rd place

Last year's Prince Philip Cup winners, Oakley Hunt (West) branch of the Pony Club, are returning to HOYS this year to try to claim their 9th title. You can follow the highs and lows of their competition with daily updates on HorseandHound.co.uk throughout the show

After a slightly disappointing start to the mounted games competitions at Horse of the Year Show (HOYS) on Wednesday afternoon, the evening session was a much better result for Oakley Hunt (West) as we shared a win with Poole and Warwickshire.

This ignited the team’s fighting spirit ahead of the final of the Virbac 3D Worming Cup final this (Thursday) afternoon.

With temperatures dropping down to 4 degrees last night, it was even harder to get up at 4am this morning. A couple of the children even got into their parents’ beds for warmth in the night. The ponies were warm and cosy in their stables though. And everyone soon got warmed up at early morning practise when they practised the little sack race.

While the children went back to bed, it was time for the parents to clean tack and the stables again.

‘Whose this then?’
‘That’s my dad!’ says Joseph

The Virbac 3D Worming Cup didn’t go quite our way — there were 3 teams eliminated in the worm race and we were one of them, which was very upsetting. One of our worms didn’t make it into the syringe tail first we think. Despite this we finished 3rd, with Warwickshire winning the title.

Then it was straight back to the stables for a tack inspection by the King’s Troop. This was a very tough inspection — Joseph as 6th man was quizzed in the tackroom about the horses, tack cleaning, feeding and about his other equestrian activities.

The fight is on now for the Prince Philip Cup tomorrow. Wish us luck!