Sunday 31 January 2010

Wairarapa Dressage Champs

What a weekend - Saturday, wall to wall sunshine and people nearly toppling off their horses with heat exhaustion vs Sunday, raining steadily all day and raincoats and very wet riders and horses. Crazy summer!!!!

Nicola and Lagan had an interesting competition but can take a lot from the two days and Nicki now has plenty to work on and some goals to work towards for their next time out. Hopefully the two of us will start attending the local dressage group rallies too - I think it would do us both good, I suspect Meg might disagree, mwahaha!

Their first test on Saturday was something of a disaster. A mix of Nicki's nerves and Lagan not being on task made for a fairly hairy test and a score of 43%. Lots of mistakes and a course error did not help their cause. Understandably Nicki was feeling fairly downtrodden so I did my best to encourage her to come back the following day to give it another go - I was sure they could do better!

I think it took quite a lot for Nicki to summon up the courage to return today but she did and all credit to her for doing so. The weather today was, as I said above, heinous! Today's test was 1.3 and I am pleased to say that they did much better. Still low scoring (49%) but SO much better than Saturday. Consequently Nicki is feeling quite a lot better and a lot more positive - Yay!

I re-connected with a rider whose acquaintance I made some years back and took some photos of her on her lovely bay, Louis. Poor Rebecca had a complete mare of a test today - the horse went well and she rode, as usual, beautifully, but the heavens fell down on top of them both - YUCK!

I took some photos, both days. Day 1, I had camera on wrong setting - stupid! Day 2, it was so vile that the photos are, shall we say, atmospheric, haha!

Warming up - Day 1
A smile!
Rainy test - Day 2
Dancing in the rain
Day 2
Rain rain rain!
My lovely boy
Dressage in the sun! Day 1
Day 1
The relieved and happy face of a dressage survivor
Day 1
Poor Rebecca!
Wet but happy!

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