Well, what can I say? At just seven years old, Freya did two great tests at the Hickstead Regional Championships to qualify for the Medium Gold and Advanced Medium Gold at the National Championships. She is such a delight to work with, and it was great to get some positive comments about her smooth and harmonious way of going.
We got to Hickstead on Saturday afternoon so I could give her some exercise before her two tests the next morning. To say she was feeling well would be a bit of an understatement!! We had a bit of jumping around on the walk down to the warm up arenas, but she settled well and did some lovely work. I then gave her some exercise in the second arena, where she would be doing her Medium, and took her for a walk around the International Arena, where her Advanced Medium was.
The morning of the competition, I drove down from London first thing. I was pretty pleased with myself for making the effort to get up extra early so I could make myself a proper breakfast of poached eggs on an English muffin. The nutritionist I worked with when I was on World Class would have been proud! She worked in really well for the Medium. I have made a couple of tweaks to our warm up routine, keeping her in a slightly lower and longer frame for longer, and I felt like it worked well. The test itself was good but I was disappointed to have a couple of blips which pulled our score down to 69.59%. I was fairly certain it wouldn’t be enough to qualify, but as I was only second to go in a large class and I had another test to do, it wasn’t something to dwell on.
After a quick break back at the stable, and a wash off for Freya, I got back on for the Advanced Medium. I shortened my warm up to 20 minutes as I was very conscious she had already worked hard. Freya has pretty endless energy and never stops trying, but her body tires well before her mind does. We did a little bit of easy stretching before I picked her up and focused on a few of the test movements. It’s always tricky doing a Medium and an Advanced Medium in the same day because you have to switch the flying changes button on! I felt like I could ask for a bit more energy and expression than I had in the Medium so I spent the last couple of minutes before I went in focusing on small transitions within the paces – using them to lift the front end and engage the hind leg more. I felt like it paid off and we pulled off a pretty much mistake-free test to earn 70.48% – good enough for second place!
Once I had done my Advanced Medium, got the score, and established that we had qualified, I could start to think about the Medium class again. At the halfway stage, we were still sitting in second and I worked out that qualifying places went down to fourth so we were definitely in with a chance. There were lots of combinations on or around 69% so I had a nerve-wracking wait. In the end, we just about managed to cling onto that magic fourth place and pick up our second ticket of the day by the skin of our teeth! I did feel bad for Lizzie Murray and her gorgeous stallion, Timolin, who just missed out on qualifying on collectives. Fingers crossed for a wild card for them.
As if the excitement of qualifying for the Nationals wasn’t enough, we now have new wheels to get us there! Our old HGV lorry has been the most amazing work horse, and has taken me and my horses all over Europe for years, but it was time to get something a little more practical and cheaper to run. We sold it to a lovely show jumping family, so it will continue to have a useful life, and we bought ourselves a very smart little 3.5t lorry to take its place. The new lorry is known alternately as the Frez-mobile and Sprogget (it’s a long story), and the most exciting thing is I can drive it on my car licence. Freya and I are free to go adventuring on our own!!
My final piece of news in this very lengthy blog is that my employer has very kindly allowed me to change my working hours so I will now be available for riding and teaching every Friday afternoon. It’s going to be a big change for me but I think it will help me get a bit more balance into my slightly hectic life. If anyone would like to get in touch regarding lessons and training, please do get in touch with me directly on emily@harrisequestrian.co.uk.
I think that’s it for now. I only have a couple of competitions planned between now and the Nationals, so expect a more of a focus on training over the next few weeks.
E.x
