“I had a very exciting week last week, it was my first senior international! I had been selected to compete in the Small Tour at Hartpury CDI with Wizard (Wurlizer), but I was quite nervous as it felt a very big step to let go of Young Riders, but it had to be done sooner or later!

Settling in

We arrived on the Thursday and settled Wizard into his stable before the trot up. It was quite a nerve racking experience when you are riding and are surrounded by top International riders and Olympians, but hopefully it will be something I do a lot more of in the future. We passed the trot up (which I always find the scariest part of the whole experience!) and then went to watch the draw to find out what time I would be competing on Friday. You can imagine my dismay when I was drawn second to go at 9:08, but the draw is something I can’t do anything about.

The big day

We had a very early start on the Friday to get ready for my test, and it was windy and raining! As a result, Wizard was quite fresh and took quite a lot of work in the warm up. I was pleased with the test apart from a fluffed canter transition, which was expensive. We scored 66.14% and finished just out of the placings - we would have been placed had we had a better transition to canter - but we were pleased nonetheless as it was better than we had expected.

I was drawn smack bang in the middle of the class for the Inter I on Saturday, and the test was better than Friday, apart from another fluffed canter transition, very frustrating. We scored 66.404% and this was good enough for ninth place. As you can imagine, we were over the moon to get into a prize giving at that level, and Wizard enjoyed it very much.

Wiz dances!

Our top 15 placing in the Inter I meant that we got through to the Inter I Kur on Sunday, where we were again drawn in the middle. Wizard felt quite tired in the warm up so I wound him up, but I needn’t have bothered because as soon as he heard the music it lifted him, unfortunately a bit too much! Wiz loves competing to music and he gets a bit over the top and tries too hard, so our technical marks were lower than I had hoped, and we finished 11th. It was nice, however, that Wizard was enjoying himself so much!

All in all, we had a brilliant time and did far better than we had expected to, I hadn’t expected to get through to the Kur or get a rosette, so on both counts we far exceeded our expectations!”