Asti’s Charming - The Fork at Tryon - Sept ‘23

This is a video for Katie and Alex and everyone at Stirling Equestrian. Well, guys, we took the mighty Charm down to try on this weekend and he competed in their sort of big fall event and we decided to put Charm up to one more level higher, which is the open intermediate, which is the equivalent of three star. So the beginning of this year he started at prelim level and doing two star and in a short amount of time we've bumped him up one more level to, to intermediate. So obviously the, the dressage is way more complicated than what we've been doing. There's, what you're seeing, there's half past and a number of trickier movements. Charm was an absolute star though in the dressage. He was up against some very, very, you know, experienced horses, some, some top horses in the sport that have been competing for a long time. And he scored a 31.4 on the dressage which for his first try at the intermediate horse trials is a great result. The show jumping was quite tall, obviously I think it'd be about a meter 20 now. So obviously he's very capable of it. He'd done bigger and better with you guys. But it was in the try on main stadium, it was quite spooky and jumped quite well. And the biggest success of the whole weekend was the cross country. I mean, I walked the cross country course and my, my heart absolutely sunk when I, I saw how tough it was and to be honest, I was in two minds whether we should run him cross country just because I was nervous that it was bit too hard for him and Charm absolutely proved me completely wrong. He actually jumped the course very, very easily, very, very well. So it's a huge success on the cross country, being his first open intermediate. I didn't push him for speed. I was so nervous and worried that if he was going to be able to jump all the jumps well that I, I really sort of set out at a bit of a steadier pace and had no intention of, of trying to be sort of competitive on the time by saying that he, he was only 25 seconds slow which was, and I was just coasting around. So I was actually remarkable how fast he was when I was intentionally trying to go slow and, and took quite wide turns and really steadied him and showed him all the complicated fences for longer and longer. So with this three star level now there's in the canter work, there's counter canter, there's simple changes. It's pretty impressive. You know, this is Charm's very first test at this Level and he's, I mean I've been practicing it at home but he got the hang of it really, really well. I'm so pumped about Charms the way he felt on the weekend. I think in about three or four weeks time there's going to be a big competition up here in Virginia called the Morven Park International and he'll have his first crack at the three star level. I can't see the cross country course being too much challenging than the one he did down there at Tryon. And he just did it so well and so easily that I feel like we should tick the box of completing a three star while he's fit and rearing. And he pulled up very sound after this competition and it's remarkable. So it's funny, you know, like for a long time one of my concerns about him was that he's just a little bit older than he should be for competing at the levels in eventing. And now that he's actually at the three star intermediate level, he's a normal aged horse at that level. So it's funny how you know, now that he's rocketed up the grades he's all of a sudden a younger horse again. You know, it takes years and years and years to get to this level and he's done it in a short amount of time. I think I'll probably try and get him to. He'll do one more big event in October at Malvern park and then feel like getting him to it. There's a couple of dressage shows in this region and just I feel like the more he goes through these sort of more complicated movements, the better he like starts to really understand them. But like I said before, it's our first try at this level. To get a 31 is a great, great result. So this is the same day, this is on Friday. This is the show jumping we sadly missed. My videographer stiff missed the first two jumps but he jumped them well. It's funny, he for sure he jumps in a better shape and a better way now that the jumps are a little bit bigger. Often when we were jumping the smaller fences he didn't really have to try and I feel like he pays a bit more attention. Like that was the Liverpool that just jumped there and I feel like if the jump was smaller he'd spook at it more. But you know, for eventing standards he's a very, very good show jumper. A lot of the eventing horses got spooky in this ring and there's not that many clear rounds. So Charm moved right up the ranks to the close to the leaders after the dressage and show jumping. And then on Saturday was cross country and like I said, I really didn't know what to expect and we'd sort of traveled so far to get there, we, you know, felt like we had nothing to lose by running him and man, he gave me a good round. This is sort of the second half of the course and you can see this jump here, it's a table and a bending four strides to a skinny on the top of a hill. And he did that quite easily. Then he gets one let up fence with your maximum table there. Just you can't quite see it. And the next jump is four star narrow dropping into the water. And so I just didn't know how Charm would react to it. And he was very, very good anyway, going nice and slow. We finished in seventh place out of about 30 horses and very, very pleased because we're getting quite close to the very top part of the sport and Charms doing it easy.