2006

This was held at Rosehill Equestrian Centre near Henley- on – Thames
Report by Claire Shoesmith

The club had qualified a team for the Dressage Competition. It was also offered a team place in the Riding Test and the Horse Trials but due to the short notice we were unfortunately only able to send a team of 3 for the Dressage and Riding Test. Kirsty Lewis and Diamond Franco had to pull out as Franco was poorly. We wish Franco a speedy recovery and look forward to them joining the teams again in the New Year.

It was a wonderfully sunny day and the ground was perfect, one of the advantages of Lodge Farm is that you can see quite a bit of the course from the start field.

First of our team to go was Vanessa. Herbert has not competed much this year with Vanessa as she has been very busy with her children and their show ponies. Unfortunately they had a few stops around the course and were eliminated but did complete the course.

Next to go was Claire with Harley they produced their usual reliable clear and only collected 9.2 time penalties.

Janet and Mish had an uncharacteristic stop at the trakehner and then whizzed around the rest of the course, but the stop caused them to have 10 time penalties and 20 jumping

Tony and Arnie got a little confused and nearly took the wrong course at fence 3 but returned to jump in the correct order, unfortunately the detour cost them 18 time penalties this gave the team a combined score of 57.2 and put them in sixth place. The team in fifth had 30 penalties so they all would have needed to do quite a lot to catch them and the winning team had only 8.4 penalties

The team’s grateful thanks to Linda Westcombe, Annette Valance and Jane Hughes for fence judging, without the support of helpers our teams would not be able to compete

The Novice Dressage Team qualified for The London and South East Championships.
Well done to Sally Wheeler, Alison Jones, Claire Shoesmith and Kirsty Lewis.

There was also success in the pairs with Claire, Kirsty, Sally and Jill Taylor all being placed.

Well done also to Suzanne Wells who qualified for Lincoln by doing an excellent riding test.

There were 23 Senior Teams.and the event was well run by Hailsham Riding Club. Although the weather was dry it was extremely cold and thermals were definately needed.

The club was well represented by 3 teams and because it was a friendly competition, riders were restricted to the amount of money they had won, allowing some of our members who are not usually eligable,  to compete.

Each of them went clear in the first round which meant they were guaranteed at least 5th place
as only 5 teams were in this position. The team then had to jump off and unfortunately
Vanessa and Claire picked up 4 faults each with Kirsty going clear.
The team ended up 4th overall with Kirsty taking 3rd place as an individual. Well done !