Life has taken some unexpected turns for me over the past few months, which seems to be a bit of a theme for 2010, so apologies for the ‘radio silence’ from this quarter!Way back on the 24th April, our wedding day finally arrived – we were very lucky to have gorgeous weather, and the only cloud on proceedings was, quite literally, the volcanic one which kept my husband’s brother in Singapore (where he lives and works) and unable to make it to the wedding. Everything else went swimmingly, we had a super day and then luckily managed to jet off to Lanzarote for a week of surfing. So I am now officially Mrs Latimer, which makes me feel rather old!
Shortly before the wedding I had been doing some serious soul searching about whether or not Boysie was the right horse for me – he’s got rather bigger than I wanted, and we just kept having rails in the showjumping, which was never the plan. I also want to go intermediate at some stage and I realistically could not see myself being able to hold him together enough to ride well round a track that big, despite having schooling round intermediate XC fences previously. So I enlisted the help of a friend and took him down for her to try and tell me what she thought. He was foot perfect with her, so I arranged that he would be dropped off at her yard the following week for her to compete with a view to selling him.
Four weeks after dropping him off, we were out at Bickenhall at the BE100 – he posted a super dressage of 32.5 and jumped double clear to come fifth – rosettes are always welcome at Chateaux Latimer, and as they are hard-won, even when I don’t actually do the riding they are still displayed in pride of place! We then set off to Broadway for another BE100, where once again he jumped double clear, this time with a spectacular dressage of 27, to come fifth again. So a quick discussion between rider and owner ensued, and we entered him up for Pontispool Novice. I must say, it is possibly more nerve-racking watching as an owner than it is actually competing, but I needn’t have worried, a 34.5 dressage coupled with a double clear gave him a seventh place and his first point.
By now, I was getting rather used to this ‘pay the bills, pick up the prizes’ lark, so I was brought back to reality at Moreton where he led his novice section after the dressage with a 27.5, but then had to warm up for the showjumping on rather dead, hard ground and then jump on a surface – he just tipped two poles so we opted to run him slowly XC, where he naturally went clear, because it’s a fine line between getting the placings to help him sell and keeping him sound. He finished up 16th, which is by no means a bad placing, but sadly does not come with rosettes!
Next stop was Longleat, and by this point he was getting rather cocky XC so we were trying out a new bit on him as he wasn’t reacting quite as fast as the rider would like in combinations. This proved to be a resounding success, but again led to a slower XC round so no rosettes that day either. The team was therefore sent off to Salperton and told to kick on round the XC, and they did us proud with a 5th placing round a tough novice track and another two points – and some prize money which is always welcome!
We then had a long discussion about whether or not it was time to test out whether he could live up to our expectations of him being a quality intermediate horse or not – stepping up a level is always a gamble when you are trying to sell. We decided to give it a whirl after one last Novice at Barbury Castle. Sadly a mechanical malfunction (the riders words were ‘something important has fallen off the front of the lorry, I am stuck at Swindon’) meant we never quite made it, which was a real shame as it is one of my favourite events in the calendar.
So we set off to Stockland Lovell with some trepidation having discussed at length whether or not to drop him down a level and come to the conclusion that it was time to run him intermediate and know for sure. And now follows the unluckiest story so far this season. Firstly, he posted a dressage of 33.6 – fabulous for the first time at the level and really encouraging when there was obviously room for improvement too, so spirits were high. We walked up to the show jumping arena to see the biggest intermediate track I have ever laid eyes on – gulp! However he warmed up well and really rose to the challenge, jumping the first 3 beautifully – in fact number 3 a little too well as it was a large oxer on a related distance to a double and he just made up too much ground to tip the first element and land a little short for the second so the rider circled him to represent rather than worry him by asking him to stand so far off a fence which was bigger than anything he’d done in competition to date. He then flew round the rest of the course to just tip the first element of the triple, so all in all we were thrilled with him. Off to the cross country, and he was flying, really loving the bigger fences when over half way round disaster struck – he jumped the corner and into the sunken road complex but as he came up the steep slope out to the arrowhead he lost a back leg, stumbled and sadly couldn’t take off for the final element. He’s so honest XC that this was really unlucky, and even more so in that the rider tipped off, her air jacket inflated and that was game over. So unfair since we both firmly believe he would have completed no problem. That’s eventing sadly!
Anyway, he’s entered up at Wilton novice and will then go intermediate again at Aston le Walls, so fingers crossed for better news after the next attempt – unless of course I come back to tell you he’s been sold, which would be both nice and heartbreaking in about equal measures.
