BLENHEIM
Jane Maher on Double Identity
This year the Riding Club Competition at Blenheim took the shape of an 'Eventer's Challenge' with a course
of 1.05m showjumps designed by Di Boddy followed by a short cross country course (within the arena)
designed by international eventing course designer, Eric Winter. After the cross country element there was
then one show jump to negotiate...more about that later!
Thursday morning arrived and I felt quite sick, not because of the 4:30 am start, but because the realisation
had dawned that I was actually going to compete at Blenheim International Horse Trials! Jane and I were
the first Riding Club competitors to arrive at 7:00 am, as we entered the show ground, we could see the
magnificent Blenheim Palace in the background behind the many tradestands.... a truly awe inspiring site
and cue Jane and I turning to each other and going "Oh my god!".
The course was presented beautifully and was a fair test with some tight turns in the showjumping and
some accuracy questions in the cross country element (an offset double of houses and a triple brush
skinny), but just to put things in perspective there was a vast corner fence from the three star cross country
element, looming close to our arena. Our team were all on before 10 and so didn't have a chance to see
how the course rode - this may have been a blessing as it caused a fair few problems and wouldn't have
instilled much confidence.
Jane was on first with the lovely Declan and made it look like child's play with an early clear round, Jayne
followed and showed how to ride the skinny, but had an unlucky show jump pole in the first phase. Then I
was on, once I remembered that I could breathe it made it all the easier! I was convinced Max would have
his eyes on stalks especially at the large wooden carving of a hen that was strategically placed in the
middle of a parallel - but he was a star - straight as a die through the offset houses and flew the
double of brushes - so good so far - alas for the rider error at the last fence - the vertical show jump, where I
failed to collect my horse back up and sadly had this down. Last to go was Sharon, whose trusty steed
Murphy had found the dewy ground particularly slippy, she coerced another clear for the team! Hurrah, at
this stage we were in first place with a score of 5 (3 scores to count). After sorting the horses out and
leaving them with haynets, we went off for some retail therapy and to walk some of the cross country, by
lunchtime we had dropped to third place. At 3:00 another couple of teams had posted zero scores, so we
were out of the top 6 places and we finished in eighth place out of 32 teams - a respectable result...
evidently we'd have won it if all 4 of our scores had counted - shame we can't change the rules eh! But we
all went home with the obligatory photo; it just so happens that these ones have Blenheim International
Horse Trials written on them!
Huge thanks to the long suffering other halves, trainers and members who came to cheer us on; Paul
Maher, Damon and Oli White, Louis Quartly, Catherine Teasdel, Lex Ruddiman, Annette Batten, Helen
Emery, Sue Kinner, Helen Davies plus her other half!
Emma White |
