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Tales from the H&H Festival of Eventing: ‘I left all of my clothes at home’

Gemma Redrup Gemma Redrup

    • One competitor at this weekend’s Horse & Hound Festival of Eventing at Keysoe (25—27 May) had a bit of a nasty surprise upon her arrival at the event on Friday. Sally Thornley, who is contesting the Ariat 90cm class, drove all the way from her Chelmsford base only to discover she had left her bag full of clothes for the week at home.

    “Thankfully I had my show jacket and one pair of breeches with me, but the rest was sitting back at Chelmsford,” laughs Sally. “I had nothing — no underwear, no normal clothes, nothing and I didn’t know what to do.”

    Sally said she considered driving back to pick them up, but her friends and fellow competitors said that they would lend her what they could, and the rest she could purchase from a nearby Tesco.

    “So off I went to Tesco and bought what I needed, only to get back to Keysoe and find all of the security tags on the underwear, so I couldn’t wear any of it!”

    Sally wrote all of this information on her cross-country commentary notes.

    “When I was in the cross-country start box, I looked over at the officials and they were bent over double laughing — they couldn’t believe it,” says Sally, who has a Facebook page named ‘Calamity Sal Attempts Eventing’. “This clearly isn’t an isolated incident — I’m always forgetting things!”

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    Sally is riding Tommy Russell this weekend, a horse she has owned for two-and-a-half years.

    “He is my first ever horse and although he was previously a showjumper, we are now having fun eventing — although he is lovely to ride, he is a nightmare on the ground,” explains Sally. “He sat on a car I was 24 hours away from trading in recently. I managed to get it sorted and then he destroyed the driver’s side door of my new car a day later. Thankfully he respects me when I’m on him!”

    The pair sit in 12th place going in the showjumping phase after a great clear cross-country round yesterday.

    Don’t miss the full report from the H&H Festival of Eventing in Horse & Hound magazine — on sale Thursday, 6 June

    Stay in touch with all the news in the run-up to and throughout major shows like London International and more with a Horse & Hound subscription. Subscribe today for all you need to know ahead of these major events, plus online reports on the action as it happens from our expert team of reporters and in-depth analysis in our special commemorative magazines. Have a subscription already? Set up your unlimited website access now

    Gemma Redrup
    Gemma Redrup

    H&H features, racing and point-to-point editor
    Gemma is an experienced journalist, having been part of the H&H team since 2014, who is passionate about all equestrian sports, including racing and point-to-pointing. She has enjoyed riding out for top trainers Nicky Henderson and Charlie Appleby and took part in a charity Flat race at in August 2018. Gemma’s reporting talents have taken her to numerous five-star events around Britain and Europe, as well as European championships.
    Gemma Redrup

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