I haven't posted in a while but yesterday was my (and my horse's) first Regional Championship. What a great experience!
We were in the Prelim Silver class, which had 37 entries and I was 4th last to go at 1:36pm. YO was in the Elementary Silver class, near the front at 9:54am so it was a long day in the sun! We left the yard at 6:45am and go to Mount Ballan (aka David Broome Event Centre aka Cricklands!) at 8.30, so plenty of time to get our bearings and head to the cafe for a sausage and egg bap :)
YO was on a tricky little horse so we were all delighted when they produced a very relaxed, obedient and correct test with just two big, but honest, blips for 65.7%.
We had three hours to kill after that, so we gave both horses a graze and a drink while ogling some very impressive horse boxes (one had pop-outs at the side AND on the roof - I daren't even think how much that must be worth! Probably more than the average house price in the UK), then I plaited Indio. We watched for a couple of hours and the standard in the Prelim looked very high. Good job I wasn't expecting to be competitive!
By the time we went to get me and Indio ready I was losing the use of my legs thanks to nerves :O Of course he was good as gold, though he was clearly quite tense and wondering what was going on. He warmed up well though, with lots of lateral work and changes of tempo to get him more supple and connected. Suppleness is still an ongoing challenge due to an old injury and a recent sore back hasn't helped! But I was delighted with how he felt and how 'with' me he felt.
We headed into the huge arena as the previous Prelim rider was finishing. Indio was very nervous of the advertising banners but he didn't seem too phased by anything else, although I'm not sure he was breathing much. Indio tried incredibly hard although every time we went towards A he had a good look at the banners. He was a bit tight and all three judges made multiple comments about lack of suppleness, as expected. However I was absolutely delighted with him, and we even managed a square halt - normally our halts look like a yak with coordination issues.
We ended up with 65%, which seemed very low compared with similar tests we've done. However a more experienced friend has told me that scores are usually 5% lower at Regionals, so that would make it 70% which is roughly where we usually are at Prelim. But it wasn't about the score - we had an amazing experience and Indio handled it all so well :) I'm incredibly proud of my boy!
Here's the video of our test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf59QqzAtOw
And some photos (I didn't manage to get a look at the pro pics and they're not online yet, so apologies for the quality as these are video stills):
