H&C are very excited to welcome Gemma Tattersall to our team and look forward to following her throughout the event season and meeting up with her at Badminton 2011 where she will be competing on the talented Kings Gem.

Team Tattersall

“At the end of February, Team Tattersall (consisting of me, my mum, my head girl Elodie, four horses and my mum's puppy Tingle) all crammed into the lorry to head off to our first event of the season, Barocca d'alva in Portugal. I have been going for a number of years now and find it is a great way to start the season as the weather is normally really good. Barocca is also a relaxed event with lovely organisers, decent courses and good ground and it also tends to be quite a lot of fun.

We crossed the channel from Newhaven to Dieppe and wound our way through France, Spain and finally Portugal to arrive at our destination a couple of days later, weary but very excited.

Gemma’s Horses Perform

I took along my top horse, Kings Gem (Gem) and three young horses, Tropique (Austin), Chico Bella (Bella) and Wolfgang Penelope (Lacey). It’s great to be able to take such a lovely bunch of horses and they all settled in well and performed brilliantly in the first week. 

Kings Gem had a double clear in the CIC** and the other three all had double clears in the CIC*.

Quiet days, not so quiet nights and a camera shy Gem

After a couple of quiet days (and a couple of not so quiet nights!) we began the second week of competition and with three horses in the CCI* and Kings Gem running in the CIC*** it turned out to be quite a busy week.

The three one star horses all performed better in their dressage, feeling much more settled and relaxed in the arena. Gem unfortunately took a dislike to the cameraman throughout her test which left us on a disappointing score and I was very frustrated but she redeemed herself by jumping a fabulous double clear and she finished 12^th in the CIC***.

Austin, Bella and Lacey all ran brilliantly across the cross country and were all in the top 10 at the close of play on cross country day. Austin and Bella both show jumped beautifully to finish 10^th and fourth respectively. Unfortunately Lacey rolled a pole which dropped her down to eighth but I was absolutely thrilled with all of them.

One small complaint

We'd all had such a great time and the horses had gone so well that we were reluctant to pack up and head home but once we were on our way we were looking forward to sleeping in our own beds and having a decent shower. My main complaint about Barocca would be that the facilities are not up to much and three weeks without creature comforts is hard!

A quiet week ahead, then it’s back into eventing in the UK, with only a few weeks to go before Badminton and I am looking forward to chatting to H&C when I get there.”