CIC-W*** Malmö

Last weekend, we made the long-planned trip to Malmö, scheduled as the final check-up for the possible candidates of the EUCH squad. I intended to create a really convincing impression of Buddy  and me for the selectors… and, as I don’t want to keep you in suspense: We did it

Malmö is quite a special place to run an event at, very spectacular setting directly at the beach. When I walked the course for the first time, I was really awed by the fences, which mostly didn’t look cross-country like at all. There were huge gymnastic apparatuses which created the impression that you had to jump over them directly into the sea, an emerging submarine in bright yellow, and some triangular skinnies which resembled those in Warendorf, only half as wide..and hundreds of people sunbathing on their towels splattered across the course like a living decoration! They fenced the track off all right during the competition, but it was still a very distracting surrounding, too much for some horses… Nevertheless an absolute highlight, which I would like to revisit anytime!

But from the beginning: I took Louis along, with the intention of further establishing him on ***-level, unfortunately he didn’t take the special atmosphere too well…The dressage test was quite ok, one flying change late but nevertheless a sound performance, unfortunately I made a mistake (got some of the movements in the wrong order, it was the first time I had to do this shortened 4* test) thus we ended up with 51 pp. During xc, he got really distracted by the hordes of spectators milling along the course, which was scary enough in itself. Though the dimension of the fences was obviously no problem, he somehow lost track of his job and we had two run-outs, which is quite unusual for him (after the one in the first water, I couldn’t turn him before it got so deep he lost the ground under his feet, what resulted in a quite spectacular photo of us in Sweden’s biggest newspaper As he had performed perfectly calm in Strzegom, but we had a similar incident earlier  at Wiesbaden, where the setting was comparable, I think I will choose his next events more carefully. Obviously the increased demands of 3- or 4 star events do not solely consist of bigger fences… In the final showjumping, he had one pole but jumped a very nice round. His next event is to be at Breda, and I hope he will be properly focused again…

Buddy fortunately is an old stager and not easily impressed by his surroundings, he was absolutely great! We did a convincing test, though this special  4*-test is not our favourite, but with 43.7 pp (rank 4) I was quite satisfied. After the disastrous round with Louis, I was quite nervous before xc. But thanks to some invaluable encouragement from our national coach Chris Bartle: ”Your eyes have to be burning on the next fence” :-)), it changed to determination, and we had a gorgeous round which was pure fun:-) We added 3.6 pp for time and remained in 4^th place. On Sunday, we eventually managed a clear round in sj and ran up to the 2nd place! And after some time, I realized just how cool a 2^nd in a world cup qualifier is

The selectors obviously agreed, and now I am definitely on the shortlist for Luhmühlen I am exceptionally happy about this, as I am fully aware of everything that can go askew in our metier (though this year’s  season has been quite successful up to now), and of course we will try to give our very best at my first Europeans among the “grown-ups”! Ben (Winter) ended up on 11th place in Malmö, what finally convinced the selectors to upgrade him from reserve status to shortlist, too. I look forward to the Perspektivgruppe making a complete appearance

This weekend, I have another outing with the Youngsters, taking Eragon and First Flight’s Beauty to CIC* at Bad Harzburg.

Warm regards, Julia

Dieser Eintrag wurde am 13.8.2011 um 13:40 verfasst und befindet sich in Julia, The English Blog. Sie können alle Antworten zu diesem Eintrag über den Feed RSS 2.0 mitverfolgen. Hinterlassen Sie eine Antwort oder einen Trackback-Link zu Ihrer eigenen Homepage.