Lincoln:
Beanie's (Donnermere) second event of the season was the Novice at Lincoln. He performed what I thought was a reasonably good test, better than his test at Oasby, and so did everyone watching. I thought he would get quite a good score but the Judge thought otherwise and gave me a poor mark of 41.0. Luckily as the scoreboards were so far away I was not aware of this until the end of the day as I am sure it would have disheartened me! In the showjumping he was looking everywhere but at the actual fences so had an unfortunate 4 faults at the first fence. He gave me a fantastic ride on the cross country, it was quite a technical course and the coffin was causing quite a lot of penalties, but he was amazing jumping all the straight routes and finishing with no time faults. He was out of the placings of course due to his poor dressage score.
Belton International:
Next it was off to Belton for the ONU18 (Q) with Beanie and we were hoping for a better dressage score. He performed a good test and scored 35.0 which was fairly good in the section. He showjumped quite late on in the day and had an unlucky 4 faults at a black and white parallel which seemed to be causing lots of refusals for some reason. The cross country course was quite big and beautifully presented with perfect going! I was really looking forward to riding it on him as it was a bold course which I knew would suit him well. He was foot perfect around the whole course getting the time and even earning a round of applause from the 3* riders who were having a course walk together at the coffin! He was placed 4th which I was really pleased with earning him another 3 BE points. I will definately be back at Belton next year!
Donnermere Novice Belton:
The next event was the BE90 at Eden Valley in Cumbria with Louis (Kellys Lad). After Oasby where he found it a bit of an eye opener and was somewhat surprised by the whole occasion we were hoping he would have learned from the experience and found it a little less daunting. He performed a very relaxed fluid dressage test on VERY wet muddy ground and coped well with the conditions scoring a very good 33.5. The showjumping was on an arena which I was glad about as the ground conditions would have made this a difficult phase on grass especially as he is not even 5 yet! He had an unlucky 4 faults at the planks off a corner but jumped a lovely round. He was very confident on the cross country and jumped very boldly finding the course easy and finishing with no faults or time faults. He came 4th in his section, his first proper BE placing! I am so pleased that he performed so well and acted so much more mature. His next event will be the BE90 at Northallerton and if all goes well he will upgrade to BE100 at Richmond in May.
Hope you are all enjoying your horses and having a good season
Phoebe Powell and the Eventing Team
