Recent Competition Update (Lincomb Arena Eventing)

In this post I'm going to be doing a quick overview of my most recent competition with Buddy.

So I started off the morning at around 9:00 where I got ready to go and took all my things downstairs. Adam Witte Photography then arrived and we got the car loaded up and drove to the yard to get Buddy ready.

We had arrived early to leave time to give Buddy a wash before going. When we arrived I went down the field to catch him where he proceeded to gallop from the other side of the field to me. He has never done this before so clearly he had far too much energy so we quickly put him on the walker to get some of his energy out. After taking his rug off we found that Buddy was already clean and did not require a wash instead we just gave him a good groom which saved us a lot of time (meaning we were able to have a quick coffee break!)

After our break we finished grooming him and put his travel boots, tail bandage and show rug on and then tied him up out the front of the stables to wait for the truck. Once it had arrived we loaded all of my things in and put Buddy's hay net into the trailer and finally loaded Buddy up.

Once we had arrived at Lincomb, Adam and I walked the course while my mum went to get my numbers. The course wasn't as long as complicated as last time but did require going out of the arena three times. We then rushed back to the trailer to get Buddy ready. After Buddy was tacked up I struggled to get on due to him trying to run off across the field the trailers were parked in but luckily just about managed and took him over to the warm up.

Once in the warm up arena he settled down and I was able to warm him up nicely until our turn in the 80cm. Once we were in the arena Buddy focused even more and put in a perfect clear round and was only 11 seconds off the optimum time!

We then had 10 minutes until the 90cm which I took walked Buddy around to try and help him recover. When we got into the arena he felt good and didn't feel too tired however we had a pole at jump 1 but this was due to an extremely dodgy stride from me. So we carried on and went clear over the next 4 jumps. It went downhill at jump 6 where we knocked part A then Buddy went to jump part B but then refused causing us to take down the whole jump! After they had rebuilt the jump we went through the double again and went through it clear so we carried on over jump 7 and 8 and also went over those clear. However at jump 9 (start of the cross country) the same thing happened again however this time Buddy got stuck over the jump. After a helper had to bring down the front two poles so we could get out and I retired Buddy as it seemed too unfair to make him carry on as he was far too tired.

After the 90cm I popped him over a low jump in the warmup to ensure he hadn't lost his confidence and then cooled him off. It hadn't been the best round but we learnt a lot from it. So we took him back to the trailer and untacked him, put his travel things on and loaded him back up (after a couple of tries).

We then got back into the truck and my mum handed me over a 1st rosette and a selection box! as it turns out we had come first in the juniors in the 80cm!

Our overall results were:

80cm: 1st in juniors

80cm: 2nd overall (by exactly 0.1 seconds!)

90cm: retired

We then drove back to the yard where we unloaded Buddy and took all of his travel things off and unloaded everything from the trailer and emptied his hay net.

A big thank you to Adam Witte Photography for all my photos and my mum for videoing!

I'm sorry this post is very brief but I wanted to get it uploaded.

Thank you for taking the time to read!

Liv and Buddy