With our next event BCA BE90 on Tuesday I thought it would be a good plan to pop along to some local SJing as Soap hasn’t been over coloured poles for a while. Cholderton Equestrian Centre is a fab venue very handy to get to for me and now under new management they are holding a lot more competitions with regular unaffiliated dressage, SJing, and BSJA starting this month. I entered Soap in the 85cms as a warm up and planned on doing the 90cms afterwards. We warmed up and went in to do our round, after gawping at the viewing gallery and being taken by surprise at the first fence he jumped really nicely. The arena felt tight after the big grassy SJing rings of BE so I really worked on riding my corners and keeping him forwards and ‘pressing to the fence’, as in tighter spaces I can fall back into bad habits of holding him back and making everything go stuffy! He jumped a lovely clear round in a good rhythm only touching one fence. I was most pleased because all the jumps were basically on a related distance due to the space and we had a good shot to every fence except the first, which was a little deep, but even that was an improvement as before I would have clamped my legs on and sent him on a flyer wrecking the rest of the round! Video below only to fence 7 as it ran out of battery, again! 🙁
As the only clear in the class we automatically won, and didn’t have to jump off, which is good because eventers don’t do jump offs! 😉 Things got better as we were awarded our red rosette (another 1st for Soap’s good behaviour pin board!) and a brand new fleece rug which fits a treat! My niece came with us to watch and she took Soap for his unofficial lap of honour round the car park, just look at him in the picture, what a poser! I spoke to my instructor Amanda Brewer during the week and she said if we went clear in the first round, bag that confidence and go home on a high so that’s exactly what we did as it’s not the height we have a problem with it’s keeping calm and ride-able between the fences. So fingers crossed this good luck bubble doesn’t burst on Tuesday and we have a good days eventing! I think some of the SJing success today can also be put down to my new 2nd hand black jacket which has itself competing up to BE Novice so its experience clearly paid off!!!
