Contessa made her four-star debut at Fair Hill in April, scoring about 36 in dressage and jumping clear, but struggled with stride placement in a tough coffin complex on cross-country. The rider, training with Eric Danner, plans a brief rest before targeting Tryon in a few weeks.
This is a video intended for Club Contessa where we took Contessa to her first ever four star short. And it was a tough one. It was the Fairhill Horse Trials put on a four star this weekend. And what you're seeing here is the dressage test which is first thing Friday morning. She was the, the very, very first horse on. She did a good test. I mean she obviously had a couple little green mistakes here and there, but the general work was good. I've been working with Eric Dander in the build up and basically the way she went's good. The, the movements are still a little bit green. I feel like I've got the, the trot really soft and really flowing. Same with the, the walk and the canter. But she's still just a little bit tense and rigid through the movements. To be honest, it wasn't quite as good as our test at Carolina International. Sometimes I find these competitions that are close to home sometimes harder to perform well at. You know, like when you go to Tryon or Carolina, you get there the day before and you work the horse in the ring and do the arena familiarization. And I did wake up early and pre rider at about 6:15 in the morning. We've been working a little bit with Silver as well. Sadly, the, the flying changes. The first flying change from memory wasn't any good and the second one was okay. I feel like once we get her sort of established at this level she'll, she'll definitely put in a rip roaring test. So she scored I think a 36, which to me was a little bit harsh just knowing that I had three horses in the class and for sure they mark a little bit easier towards the end of the competition. And sadly our Contessa went early. That aside, she had a great show jumping this morning. On Saturday morning it was a very, very tough show jumping course and she was one of the only horses to show jump clear and inside at the time. And then sadly the cross country, she was a good girl. She was green though. I mean this was by far the hardest cross country course that Contessa's ever done. And she felt like she was right on her limit the whole way around. And right at the end of the course there was a coffin which was a rail down a steep embankment, one stride to a big ditch and then two massive, massive strides to a corner. And in my opinion the course designer actually built the two strides way, way, way too long. And Contessa actually did two and a half strides and glanced off the corner and then we sort of had to figure out how to get back to represent it, the jump. And I finally found a path where I sort of trotted the ditch and then did three strides to the, to the corner and she jumped it well. And the other horses in the class I ended up going in three strides. So it was a little bit unfortunate that Contessa went so early because I tried to ride it the way the course designer wanted to be ridden in two strides. But the reality is it was better in a very, very short three, which is a real bugger actually because she was trying and she was green around the course but she was hanging in there and we were only a couple of fences from home and anyway, so this is our first change that obviously you can see that we're a bit, bit crooked and a bit not quite straight. Show jumping was brilliant. Peter Wild came down and warmed us up and like I said before, she, she jumped like a ripper. I think our next competition will be at try on. I initially was going to do the full star long, but so that was clean. It was all right. I need to sit a bit straighter. I think I'm going to do the four star short after our run out today. I don't think she's qualified now for the four star long. That being said, she definitely was sort of bordering on the line of being a little bit inexperienced today. I really had to sort of carry her around and set her up for every jump and she just needs to get slightly more consolidated at this top level of the sport. The good thing with her is it's not going to get that much harder for the rest of her career. Like we are really at the top, top level of the sport. The cross country course, the dressage test and the show jumping can't get much bigger, wider or more technical than it is now. And at the moment she's a little bit green, but I feel like if I can just get her around a couple more of these events, she'll get slightly more seasoned at this four star, five star level. She's super careful and had a good jumping lesson with Peter last week and really trying to get her to open up her hind end. She sometimes, if you remember the rail we had at Carolina, it was this line here actually she has the back rail of the oxes down and here I just sort of pushed her a little bit more and she jumped it well. So I plan to give her a easy couple of days and then gently put her back to work. And our plan would be to take her to tryon in three or four weeks time, four star short. And then if that goes well, we'll have to do a four star long, maybe at Bereauvant or potentially we could might even get a grant to go out to Rebecca Farm. We'll just see how it all unfolds. Whoop. See her greenness there? The way she jumps through that. Anyway guys, thanks for the support.
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