Chris just cant take the smile off his face after finishing first and second - photo by Libby Law
Well what a month this has been! I am now relocated in the UK. Well I’m kind of relocated in the UK as I've been away for over a week and only spent one night there. Event after event has been cancelled, thanks to the rain, even the un-cancellable Badminton and even when we went to the continent the rain followed us.
At the moment Burto and I are in the truck on the way to the ferry port from a somewhat successful week at Saumur CCI3* with the team taking first and second. The day after I arrived in the UK we loaded Holstein Park Leilani and Haruzac onto the truck and onto the overnight ferry to France. This was a pretty cool experience to front up to so early on in my UK experience. It is amazing how well the horses deal with it all. They are driven into the cargo hold of the ferry, where not one inch of space is wasted and stand in the truck overnight for the trip. With an early start the next day we were on our way south to Saumur. Along the way we did some property window shopping, a few laps of the round-about, a tour of the pony club grounds, spoke French in sign language and for the most part drove on the right side of the road.
' Haruzac on his way to a CCI3* win - photo by Libby Law
I learnt a lot this weekend about being an interested spectator. I've never before watched someone ride and really cared about the outcome. I mean sure you wish your friends well, but at the end of the day if they are in your class you don't mind seeing them with an error of course in their dressage test or taking a rail down show jumping (let's be honest). The most stressful part was watching the cross country on the big screen at the finish and not being able to understand the French commentary. The only words I could catch were ‘problem’ and ‘Chris Burton’ as the cameras were focused on another rider. Turns out they must have been saying ‘no problem’ as he stormed home on both, clear and about as close to the optimum time as you could get in the pouring rain and deep sand. And talking about the weather that was another little lesson learnt from the week is that when you go eventing in Europe, you cannot have too many dry sets of clothes!
Stablemate Holstein Park Leilani has a fence down but still finishes second Photo: Libby Law
The rain continued for the show jumping, but that wasn't going to stop Lani and Harry showing the rest of the world how it's done. Harry added just a time fault to his score to finish first, Lani coming in a close second with an unlucky one down. All in all it was a pretty good day at the office.
Taking a step back for a minute I have to tell you about the last event I did before leaving for UK. I had such a fun time taking Maggie around her first 1* at Canberra - photo above. We had a great run cross-country. She is such a machine! I've never had such a brave straight forward horse before. We made one little green mistake at the skinny logs where she misread the third element and I didn't do enough to help her. It saw us with 20 penalties but was a non-issue. Not bad for a horse that has only been eventing for 8 months. I really wish I had been able to check her in with the rest of my luggage!
Ladyship on her way down to the water, Canberra 1*
It's a shame that we weren't able to report on a smashing victory at Badminton as well. Who knew England got so wet? Hopefully the next exciting news is a spot on the team for London. Until then we have Tattersalls in Ireland to look forward to in two weeks.
Bek
