I think the best way to sum up the Young Rider Europeans for me personally is ‘disappointing, but showing great promise for the future’.
Nemo was certainly full of energy when we arrived, which was great as it means we have got him up to real competition fitness. But the drawback with having him so ‘hot’ is that he can lack concentration. When it came to my test I struggled to keep him ‘under the thumb’ and when you are competing at a championship there is simply no room for error.
There was a real championship atmosphere in Ermelo and he did pick up on that so our marks weren’t as consistent as they have been at home. Also there was a large discrepancy between some of the judges, with one having me in 7th place and another in 33rd!
We arrived back in the UK at 1am in the morning, so it was a case of sorting out the horses then off to bed. Then Monday was spent unpacking the lorry and on Tuesday it was straight back into the swing of things with 8 horses to ride and 5 lessons to teach! It was good to get back on the other horses as I did get a little bit bored with only one horse to ride while I was away.
Last Thursday we took Amo over to Addington for a practise run before this week’s regionals. Turned out it was a good thing we did as while we produced some really expressive movements, we also pretended that we had never seen letters in an arena before and spooked at every single one! Hopefully we will have got that out of the way and we will produce a good test this week.
Then on Saturday night I went to the pub to catch up with a few school friends I hadn’t seen for a while. While we were there we decided to head off to the Hartpury CIC party, which is just 20mins down the road, and had a really great night.
I’m at Addington for the regionals at the moment and I’ll let you know how we get on next week. It’s going a busy week as I’m going to be riding in the dressage quadrille at the Windsor Europeans, as well as helping out H&H with their online dressage coverage. Til then…
Charlie
