Katherine – Autumn/Winter News

The end of the event season ended very well in my final two events, Gatcombe International and Little Downham, but it has been a bit of a shock going back to school to do A-levels after having a year off to ride!

I had both horses running at Gatcombe, Romeo in the CIC* and Leo in the novice. We stayed the night locally as the boys were on separate days. Leo was on first and posted a very good score of 29 in the dressage and then jumped a super double clear with some time xc to come 10th! Romeo had his dressage that afternoon and was a little excited but still managed to score a good score of 48.9 (FEI marking). The next day he was on flying form and jumped two superb rounds in the showjumping and on XC. He was on a mission straight from the start after taking a flyer at the first fence in the showjumping! The time was very tight and we picked up 5 time faults to add to our dressage. The CIC* was a huge section with 101 horse and rider combinations in it!! I was very happy that Romeo and I came in the top quarter!

Romeo – Gatcombe

Romeo – Gatcombe

My last event of the season was Little Downham with Leo where we were in the novice. Little Downham is one of my favourite events because the ground is always guaranteed to be good, the team that run it are lovely and the courses are very well built and offer a good challenge. We were in a very hot section with top riders including Caroline Powell and Kristina Cook! Leo really showed himself to be the quality horse that he is that day and lead from start to finish. Starting with a very impressive dressage score of 22 (!!!) and then a cracking double clear in the time he took the win! I was over the moon to finish on such a positive end.

The next two months the boys had very easy and it allowed some time for them to be let down and worked easy to give them a rest. They enjoyed hacking and the odd schooling session. They came back into full work at the end of December and have been on very good form since! In their first jump lesson they were incredible with neither of them touching a pole and they were very happy to be jumping again. We went out to a dressage competition with Leo taking the win and Romeo very hot on his heels coming second! In February they went for the first jump XC since October and jumped as though they had never had anytime off, jumping lots of tricky and technical lines all in their stride. We are now getting the final preparations ready before the event season starts in a few weeks – I can’t wait!

Thank you to Honeychop for supporting us and providing the boys with the chaff that they love 🙂