Sophie Wells Blogs on Her British Dressage Championship Experience
The Nationals was a big learning curve for Team Wells, more from the development sense as I took my young horse, Jorge. We have only been competing together since May, and in that time managed to be very successful, qualifying for the regionals and nationals at medium open, and para summer champs, Hartpury international and the KBIS Para class at the Nationals.
So our experience together has been fairly short term, which is why we are thriving on going into lots of different situations and atmosphere. He was very chilled out and took it all in his stride, arena walk, warm up, test and prize giving. All really important in the development of him for the future. We had a few green errors in both classes, however he is still green at the level, but behaviour and general way of going I was really pleased with. Jorge won the Grade IV championship test which is encouraging.
However he was a little tired by day 3 for his medium open test, he warmed up really well, but I could feel he had lost a little sparkle. In the test, I even had to give him a little kick in the medium trot, which I’ve never had to do before, so he cantered as it was a surprise to him too. We had an unfortunate mistake in the halt rein back where my loop slipped off my finger and fell right down so Jorge walked forward, missing the movement, but that’s one of those unfortunate things I suppose! We still managed a very respectable 66.5% and mid class, which is positive as without the mistakes, he would have been really up there! Very proud of him!
Noki had an OK test in the inter 2, he missed nearly 3 weeks while we were away at WEG and losing a shoe, which at his age of 17, on the lazy side anyway, he lost a bit of fitness and motivation, so we lost power in the piaffe passage in the test, but we finished on a respectable 64% so the rest of the work really picked the marks up, as this time last year we would have really struggled. Lots of progress made :)
We are now back to getting the rest of the horses that are at home out and getting some ring practice, and qualifying some for the winter regionals able bodied, and winter champs for paras! Because Emma Sheardown and now Emma Kent are based with us, it takes some good organisation to get us all out! Reece and Noki now aim for Vale View High Profile Show, as it is very nice and close.
