Miraculous recovery at Thoresby

Considering we thought it was going to be cancelled earlier in the week a miraculous recovery was made with the phenomenal work from Stuart Buntine and the team at BEDE at Thoresby. The courses were fabulous, big, bold, educational and required committed riding.

I’m sure there will be many riders regretting going home early as by the weekend the ground improved beyond belief. The 2*’s had the hardest time and we were very proud of our pupil Lucy Standish who, after doing a superb test lying 2nd, made one small error across country to finish 22nd. By the time the 3 and 4* competitions ran the ground only got better.

It was such fun and a privilege to be riding in such a beautiful parkland setting. Unfortunately we only got to run Pure Trendsetter in her first run of the season as Pure Britannia missed out on her Novice run, but we were delighted for her to finish 5th in a very hot, huge 3* section.

Everyone struggled a bit with the dressage arenas but it was a worthwhile education for the horses should we aim for top 4 or 5* events in the UK in the future.

I love watching Ellie and Trendy go across country. They were one of the few pairs to take the tight line on the combination at 6, and then because they have such a great partnership and trust in each other they were able to ride forward distances through combinations and pop in a more controlled distance proving their trust and partnership just gets better and better.

I must say thank you to Jeremy Scott for taking the pressure off me and warming Ellie up for the Show Jumping. And a massive thank you to Stuart and the team at Thoresby – we are definitely looking forward to next year.

It’s a busy week ahead for us with two days at Larkhill with all four of the home-breds and then stallion Britannia’s Mail heads to Cirencester Advanced for his first outing of the season.