CSI3W Leszno

All is well that ends well... 

We had such a great weekend in Poland. Started off very unlucky - Merlin injured himself at Hickstead the day before we left (only slightly, nothing to worry about!) but what timing! Obviously he came along "for the ride"  -  could never leave him behind :-) but he just had a bit of a vacation in freezing leszno. This meant that Curly would have to hold up the fort. 

There were two qualifiers for the World Cup and two for the GP - the same horse could not compete in both and the average result (in terms of ranking) after both qualifiers would determine the top 60 riders eligible for each class. 

I decided to put Curly (Heracross) in the World Cup qualifiers and hope for the best as neither of us had ever done one before. Last fence down in the first phase on day 1 (ended up 33rd) hmmm.... clear and 7th in ranking class day 2, great result. World Cup day, the course was actually much bigger than I'd expected - apparently one of the FEI judges was there to inspect that the course was in fact at the dimensions specified in the program i.e. up to 1m60 in some spots. Luckily for me Curly is a bit of a beast and quite frankly isn't phased by anything... The triple combination was quite spooky for the horses and having watched the other riders, they all seemed to struggle as they came in too fast - i went the opposite route and actually took him back too much which meant he really had to stretch to get us out... my bad... that's life -  you live you learn. He is so elastic that i should have trusted that I'd have no problems getting him back from a higher pace.

I really think he showed himself off though, jumped absolutely beautifully and I'm thrilled to say we're back in sync.  

Other than that, must say that Pam and I had a fab time in Leszno - really a great show and special thanks to Edward and Julia Bunn (Hickstead) for driving us there and back, what a treat! On such a high now... we left the show early Sunday morning and I hopped off the lorry at Gatwick airport to take the train back to london. the boys will be back home at ballylawn (Waterford) Thursday morning.