"As both Wizard (Wurlizer) and Del (Headmore Delegate) are stepping up a level this year, Mum and I thought it would be a good idea to take them to our local unaffiliated show at Sparsholt where they hold a pick your own test class. My theory was that if it was unaffiliated, I could hide and if it all went completely pear shaped it wouldn’t matter!

Whizz kid

It was Wizard’s first time out competing since the National Championships in September, and he loves going to his ‘parties’ as every time I get some travel boots out for the younger horses he looks at me and hopes that it’s his turn so, you can imagine his delight when, this time, it was him going on the lorry! His face lit up and he couldn’t wait to get up the ramp! We were doing our first Inter II so, not only was Wiz stepping up a level but so was I, this was completely unchartered territory for both of us, so I was absolutely terrified and actually didn’t really want to go and do it, but I had to do my first one at some point!

Wiz was a little bit over the top when I first got on him as he was so pleased to be out, but he settled down and we managed to get everything we needed in the warm-up; piaffe, passage and one time changes all happened. My aim was just to get round, if I could go down the centre line at the beginning, do everything I had to do in pretty much the right place and then go down the centre line at the end I would have been happy! In fact, we managed more than that as we had no major mistakes, I got both piaffes and my one time changes, so we were thrilled. I came out with a very good score of 68.68%, which was I was more than ecstatic with as a highly respected list 1 judge was judging, and it was a good start irrespective of the score as I had said before I went in that I didn’t mind what score I got as long as we got round.

Del's big day

It was then Del’s first PSG and the changeover was a bit manic as there weren’t enough entries due to the weather to give me a long gap between the two tests. However, Del didn’t mind a shortened warm-up and, although he hadn’t competed since the Champion of Champions at Addington in November, Del being Del couldn’t care less! He is still very green at PSG but he took to it like a duck to water and actually went better in the test than he had been at home and in the warm-up! Both canter pirouettes were superb and we got both sets of flying changes, and, as always, his trot work was outstanding! He finished on a terrific score of 71.54% which, for a green horse doing his first test at the level is amazing... I’m running out of words to describe it now!

So, all in all, it was a very satisfying outing and well worth going."