Last weekend Equi-PA’s assistant Floor won the bronze medal at the Dutch championship Z (Novice) eventing in Hattem.
She became second after dressage. “My horse Go Special is a dressage bred KWPN horse (Special D x Sandreo x Jazz) and he loves to dance. However we spent extra time on showjumping towards this championship, I was determined to set a good score in dressage to start with and took extra lessons as well. This payed off; he was really fresh but focussed and did his very best. We had a slight mistake in the extended canter but ending up second wasn’t a bad start at all.
Off to Showjumping; our least favourite part as we both are still a bit insecure. The warming up went as I planned with my trainer, the first part of the course was perfectly fine. Go Special (aka Gambler at home) jumped like he never did before, just perfect. The second part – due to the slippery underground – was a bit difficult for him and his jockey left him alone a bit. Couldn’t blame him for three poles down but this obviously wasn’t the result I was aiming for. The good thing about a three-phase show is that cross country always comes quite fast after Showjumping, so there wasn’t a lot of time to think about what happened, we simply had to move on to the next phase.
He felt really awake and fit when we entered the start box and we were ready to rock ‘n roll. There was no time to enjoy the course along the way; it was a tough but fair cross country and I really had to stay focussed at all times. The grass fields where very slippery but Go Special was just bossing around and with just two seconds over the optimum time we came home without mistakes. He made me so proud and when it turned out we ended up third I couldn’t be more happy. He is just eight years old and the best has yet to come!