I finally made it home and I am enjoying every minute of it. It's not a vacation by any means but its nice to get up, feed the horses, and relax. That routine is only going to last one more day since my horses can't exercise themselves. Speaking of exercise I'm going back to the gym to get more fit for the fall events. I think all riders should exercise on the side. Riding is good physical work but there are a lot of muscles we use that don't always get worked out during our daily riding. I want to continue working on my core muscles, they help with all the phases of Eventing.
Anyways let me catch you up on how Bromont went. Got into the horse park around 2 am on Monday, gave Ollie the day to relax on Tuesday, and we had our first horse inspection on Wednesday. For anyone that reads this and doesn't now how a three day event works there are 3 horse inspections during the whole weekend. First one is usually on a Wednesday. You present your horse to the ground jury and trot your horse in hand to show they are physically fit and sound to compete. The 2nd inspection isn't usually noticed since it happens as you are coming off of cross country, as you slow down after the last jump and trot the vets are there watching your horse to see if they are injured or extremely exhausted. The final jog is on Sunday, its usually a formal inspection which means you dress to impress and its before show jumping. It shows that your horse is healthy and sound to continue the competition.
Ollie passed his first jog without hesitation. Dressage went surprisingly well considering Ollie was full of himself during warm up, he was kicking up his heels and squealing. On the way to the show ring I think he realized what was going on and quickly put on his game face. Our test felt great! I thought it was our best yet, and it scored better than Jersey Fresh. We didn't have the winning test because Ollie just gets a hair behind the vertical, I'm working oh so hard on getting him to stretch his neck out just a fraction more to get those 8's and 9's. We went into cross country day with a 58. The course was challenging, very twisty paths and slight inclines to gallop. There were combinations on course that had a lot of riders questioning themselves if they had walked the best route or did they need to go back out and look again. I walked it twice and went out of the box confident. Nothing on course made me lose sleep, and it rode great. Ollie got tired as I suspected he would. We have been working hard on our conditioning since riding with Buck. But I knew he wasn't 100% fit enough to breeze around the course. We came in with 18.4 time penalties, which isn't bad but it put us down in the rankings. After cross country it's a long day and partial night of continuous icing of the legs, walking, and running fluids. We also had to braid since the jog was at 8 the next morning. My parents were nice enough to come to the barn and braid him for me since it was coming on 10 pm and I still needed a shower. Ollie passed his 3rd jog that morning and returned to his stall to rest and wait for the show jumping phase. I did pre-ride him and he jumped great but I think riding him before showing was possibly the cause of our poor round. It also could have been my riding, I'm still looking at the video my parent's took to find out. Ollie and I dropped 5... yes count it 5 rails. I didn't get qualified for Rolex by one rail, dropping four rails would've been fine but of course we dropped one more than allowed. That was a depressing end to an overall good event, but I looked on the bright side, I completed my first three star safe and sound. Now I'm determined to do more than just get qualified at Fair Hill this fall, I'm going for a win or as close to it as I can get.
My blogging may not be as frequent now that I'm home, but it will go back to every Monday after I go back to Buck's in the middle of July. There will be more horses and more shows to keep you updated on then but for now I'm just enjoying a short break and riding my horses. Hope everyone enjoys my blog, if you have any questions or tips send an email to eventer92@mac.com.
Your Aspiring Olympic Rider,
Callie Adaire Judy
