Richmond and Bishop Burton

Since I last blogged, Kellys Lad (louis) has been out a couple more times.  He was balloted from Chatsworth, so got a late entry into Richmond.  He ended up running on the Monday in the Novice, as the weekends classes were cancelled.

He was unlucky in the dressage as he got the only 10mins of the morning when it was sheeting down with rain, so he was a little unsettled and had his quarters in in most of the canter work.  He scored 40, which was not as bad as we thought it may be!  He did a poor showjumping round for him, getting a bit strong and not really listening and had 2 fences down.  We put it down to the fact that he goes to Richmond to jump fairly frequently and was a bit over confident!  He redeemed himself with a fast accurate cross country round within the time.  Needless to say, he was out of the placings for the first time since he started doing Novice.

Bishop Burton was next for Louis.  He did a slightly tense test and scored 40 again, but cheered us up with a lovely clear in the showjumping arena on Bishop Burton's amazing surface.  The cross country was a fair test of the level, but again he flew round stopping the clock on the optimum time exactly!  He finished in 8th place and he felt really confident.  He has his first 1* next week, so fingers crossed it will go well.

The youngsters are coming along well.  George (Cairngorm) was entered for Richmond, but didn't get a run due to the bad weather.  He had a run the week after in the unaffilliated at Northallerton around their BE90 course in which he had 1 showjump down and was clear on the cross country.  He has now been entered for Skipton and Hutton in the Forest in June and will contest BYEH classes at Bramham (currently on the waitlist) and Yorkshire Sport Horse.

Teddy (Burway) has taken a step back in his training in that now he is much fitter he is finding it quite hard to control his excitement when out with lots of horses.  His recent cross country schooling session was interesting in that it was very busy and he just wouldn't settle.  Since then though, he has been out showjumping and stayed very calm and produced a double clear.  We will have to take it more slowly with him and maybe just play about with him this season until he starts to calm down and take things more in his stride!

We have taken on another 5 year old to produce now.  He is a 15.1 roan grey Connemara from Ireland.  He has lovely big paces and a super jump and is level headed.  He will hopefully do some BE events towards the end of the season.  I will put a photo of him on soon.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed reading my blog and keeping up with my progress this season.

Phoebe Powell and the
eventing team.

UPDATE

Good news, Kellys Lad (Louis) has made a very successful transition up to Novice level.  He completed his first Novice at Belton, which is a fairly strong test of that level, and performed a lovely fluent dressage test scoring 34.5 and putting him in 5th place after dressage.  He showjumped a lovely round but had an unlucky 4 faults, and completed the cross country easily but getting a handful of time faults.  He finished the day in 9th place and earned his 1st BE point!

His next Novice was at Kelsall Hill where he ran in fairly testing conditions.  He did a fairly nice test with a couple of small errors and he was not enjoying the deep going, he scored 39, which was a little disappointing.  He had 4 faults to add showjumping, but again flew round the cross country finding it all rather easy and finishing in 10th place. 


He is showing us he finds Novice rather easy, just as we thought he would.  He has also upgraded at BSJA to jumping 1.15 and 1.20 tracks at which he has been getting clear rounds.  He also recently won his first elementary dressage test with a score of over 65%.  Quite remarkable for a 6 year old!    He has now had his next events cancelled due to the bad weather, but hopefully he will run at Richmond, Bishop Burton in the Novice and then he will have a go at his first CIC* at Brand Hall in early June.


The youngsters have had their first run at an unaffilliated event where George (Cairngorm) was double clear with a 31.0 dressage score to get placed and Teddy (Burway) got a bit tense in the dressage, showjumped with one down and clear cross country, but so far neither have had a BE run as their events have been cancelled due to the heavy rain fall of late.  George is entered for Richmond BE90, fingers crossed it will run, if not both youngsters will be entered for Skipton in June.


Thats all for now, hopefully I will have some events to blog about soon, if it stops raining. x