Pony Club Centre Championships

The Pony Club Centre Equitation Compettion is held in Derby at the Pony Club Championships. It involves four team members two 12 and under and two over 12 and two horses, they each ride a dressage test and jump a course of jumps. The team from Talygarn were Chloe Reakes, Sarah Blake, Zoe Morgan and Molly Groves. Chloe and Sarah riding Fred and Zoe and Molly riding Lucky.  We stayed on the showground over night as Amelia had jumped Destiny in the intermediate SJ on the monday and were up very early to get the horses ready tuesday morning, although not early enough really as it took quite some time to get them plaited and organised,  it was about a half mile trek to the dressage arenas and nerves had overcome Molly who was sick several times.  Chloe was the first to ride her dressage test on Fred who hadn’t had enough time to settle and was a bit on his toes. Chloe did a very good job on him but it was a shame he wasn’t a bit more chilled. Molly and Zoe both rode Lucky for their tests and then Sarah did hers on Fred who by this time was a lot calmer and Sarah rode a very nice test. After the Dressage we moved to the show jumping arena. Fred has been out to a lot of shows and I was confident that he would jump ok but we haven’t had Lucky long and although he has been indoors to Sunnybank a couple of times and jumps at home we did not now how he would be outdoors on grass. Zoe rode him first and jumped a lovely clear round Molly also did a good round on him but had one run out. Sarah and Chloe jumped  lovely round’s on fred. The turn from fence 6 to fence 7 was not easy as the angle was too tight and a lot of riders veered right after jumping 6 then cantered around that corner to the left on the wrong leg most didn’t change or went disunited and I’m pleased our girls knew their canter leads. The girls took the horses back to the stables and we went to have a look at the scoreboard. I wasn’t sure how well they had done as its difficult to work out but I thought maybe around 5th so it was a lovely surprise when they were called onto the podium in 3rd place.

Each Team member also competed as an individual in their own section. Chloe and Zoe were 5th in their section but Sarah Blake was the winner of hers. We had an idea Sarah would win but her Gran had thought she would be second, I was standing next to her when they called out the order and she had her camera in her hand for the 2nd place when it wasn’t Sarah that was called I don’t think it occurred to her gran that she had won as she looked quite confused that Sarah hadn’t been called and then when Sarah was called into first place she screamed in my ear. There were 23 teams taking place in all so I think they all did tremendously well. We didn’t do well in the tack and turn out but I didn’t expect we would although they should have really as they were immaculate and at least they did turn their own horses out and their tack and although there was no inspection for turn out at the show jumping the standard was appalling, a lot didn’t wear hairnets for the jumping and some looked very messy whereas our team went in looking very smart. So well done girls Talygarn is very proud of you. Photos are on the Gallery

Posted on Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 at 11:14 pm You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.