Osberton weekend

Saturday kicked off with Adam and Secret Night on the cross country in the 2*L, and he had a great round but an annoying glance off a corner. He even managed to go inside the time, and Secret Night came out of it very well.

I was jumping Grafennacht first and we had quite a decent track, probably the biggest she will ever had met and there was plenty of atmosphere in the arena.  I have to say she jumped superbly and was one of only 9 clears in the class.  I was delighted with her and that moved her up the order into third place going into cross country.  

Under Oath was then in the 6yo class and he didn’t have as good a day, and I was very disappointed with 4 down.  I am not going to dwell on it and we will be giving him some show jumping mileage this winter.

At the end of the day it was Summer At Fernhill’s cross country,  he jumped a nice clear but unfortunately got 5 time faults which dropped him down to 8th place. The course was quite decent and asked plenty of questions and I was very happy with how he took everything on, but the poor chap got very lit up in the warm up and I wonder if that just took away a bit from him at the end of the course.  He came out of his run very well, trotted up on springs, and show jumped a super clear today to finish 6th.  Slightly frustrating the show jumping was a bit straight forward as I think the top five, after cross country, all jumped clear too. 

I decided not to run Under Oath cross country as it had got pretty muddy and I did not think it was necessarily a very good schooling round.  

In the 7yo/3*S final the cross country went in reverse order so I was quite aware I would have to crack on on the course to hold on to my  place.  Grafennacht absolutely flew around the course, gave me a brilliant round, but very frustratingly got a couple of time faults which left us in 2nd place.  She was beaten by 0.2 for the win, of course by Piggy, so I could not be happier with her performance or her results, and she had a great set up run for Lion next week.

It is quite interesting to note, looking at the results, that the first two in the 3*L were equal, the first two in the 3*S finished 0.2 apart and the first two in the 2*S finished 0.1 apart, so it was certainly a little bit tight and far from being comfortable.

Stuart and his team had done a brilliant job organising such a chaotic weekend, everyone was there which was great.  It was just a shame we disappear into the outer hemisphere with no phone service or internet.  Every communication dies a death so perhaps one day he will invest in a mast?