| Dressage Test: BE95 (2012) | Judge: Jill Price | Dressage Mark: 39.0 |
| SJ Jumping Penalties: 4 | SJ Time Penalties: 0 | |
| XC Jumping Penalties: 0 | XC Time Penalties: 0 | XC Time: 4:05 |
| XC Optimum Time: 4:11 | Placing: 25th |
Well, not really sure what happened with the dressage today, the dressage was on a surface and Finn worked in well, but then went really tense coming away from the work in to the test arena. She felt like a bottle of pop, but I tried to stage manage as much as possible. She virtually buggered off with me across the diagonal at movement 2. I was amazed that we got a 39 to be honest because Jill is quite harsh with her marking, so maybe the cover-up worked?!?
Show Jumping felt good – balanced and rhythmical. The pole down was due to pilot error! I got the line to the double wrong and Finn took the front pole of the first element. I also got the line to the last but one fence horribly wrong – but Finn tried really hard and left this up – lucky!
The XC was awesome, I decided that with a 39 dressage and 4 faults SJ I could take the opportunity to play with my speed across the country. I let Finn go at her own pace, I didn’t push her out of her rhythm at all and she made the time perfectly – 6 seconds to spare. I was a bit concerned about 3 of the fences: the bank with a jump before and on top at fence 4, the corner by the lake at fence 6 (complete with noisy flapping flags and grandstand) and the water at fence 7 – she just flew them all – what a little star – if only she could be consistently like this with her XC jumping!!!
Despite not being a successful day – I was massively pleased with Finn’s way of going in the jumping phases.