Bramham - Oratorio dressage

It was only a day for Oratorio (Rio) today at Bramham, and I was delighted with how well he went.  He has been in a good frame of mind all week here, and I was very hopeful that he could produce a good test.  Historically he often makes a few mistakes so we have never quite pulled it off, which has been frustrating.  However today he really did pull off his best ever test.  He was totally relaxed and focused and got some very good scores to finish on 26.7 lying in 6th place which is just great.

He got a couple of little of things wrong, one of his changes was late and he added bit of a head toss to his walk but otherwise he was spot on and totally deserved his mark.

I was obviously very happy that he scored well as it is great to have a good performance recognised.  However he is a little bit off the leading pace of 19, which is quite a long way out in front.  But in 6th place he is very much in the mix of the next bunch so anything could happen.

The 3* at the top end is quite a competitive class as there are 23 French horses here all sighting for their place at the World Equestrian Games in September.  So there is the odd 4* horse in the field and Rio is very much not in that bracket at the moment.

Luxury has dropped down now 6 places, he is only 2 penalties behind and yet he is 6 places behind which shows again how tight it is.

The cross country course looks very decent so is hopefully fair.  They have now made nearly all of the ground a goer, but Bramham is always a demanding one and a very physical test, so I will be hoping my horses are fit and well.

As the ground is so quick the optimum time could be very 'gettable', which very often it is not.  Both Luxury and Rio are on early tomorrow, and Pimms show jumps early and goes cross country last, so it will be a busy day.