BRITISH RIDING CLUBS
SEIB Insurance Brokers Novice Winter Championships
WRITTEN BY ARCHIE BRYCE
On the weekend of the 26th/27th March, we made the long journey to compete for Bath Riding Club juniors in the winter SJ Championships at Arena UK in Grantham. We qualified for this earlier in the year as the winning team at area level. Leo was a new pony to me last May and we have gone from him being very green round 50cm courses to competing at our second championship this year.
We went with the hope that we would have some good rounds and have a fun time. The first round that we had to jump was in the outdoor arena at 70cm, I want too worried about the course but lots of people were picking up time faults so I was a bit worried as Leo was definitely one of the smallest there (he is 12.1hh). We didn't need to worry as Leo was perfect and we were clear with seconds to spare
The second round was in the indoor arena and bigger but again Leo was a good boy and went clear with no time penalties. I then watched the rest of my team competing over the afternoon, they rode some great rounds for use to finish on a score of 0. One other team also finished on 0 so we were told that we would need to do a team jump off! The jump off was bigger again and very tense - as a team we finished on 2 time penalties but the other team had a fence down which meant they finished on 4 penalties and we were the winners!
I am so proud of Leo and really enjoyed my experience at Arena UK. I am hoping we will qualify for lots more championships this year.
