Contessa - Plantation FEI - Sept ‘23

This is a video for Club Contessa. Well, girls, we took Contessa out to the Plantation Field International Horse Trials this weekend for her final run before we tackle Maryland. Five star. And it started out well and it ended disastrously. The dressage actually was quite good. This was her dressage test on Friday morning. Beautiful weather, lovely ground, and Contessa was fantastic. She got a. She got her best sort of score at the. At the four star level for as far as I can remember. Actually, she. She's got a score of 33. One judge had her on 64%, the other judge had her on 68%. So we're starting to get closer and closer to being, you know, to my goal of getting her under, under 30. The first flying change was clean, but a bit messy, and the second flying change was late. Good news for us guys, though. Silva's having this baby this week and Contessa will have a proper dressage rider back on her hopefully soon. Bettina Hoy was out this week helping us train the dressage. And as you can see, the trot work's fantastic. She got all sevens and 7.5s in the trot work and then the walk was good. And then obviously the canter is our biggest challenge. She's a very sort of long horse and very, very hard with her sort of confirmation to balance and collect. And a lot of the canter work was quite good. And obviously the flying changes are continually being a work in progress. By saying that, I do think I'm slowly getting the hang of them, which is taking some time. Anyway, the show jumping was the next day, so this was Friday. Saturday was the show jumping and a monsoon of weather hit Unionville, Pennsylvania and there was just wind and rain and this beautiful ring that we're doing dressage in turned into a swamp by saying that Contessa actually jumped fantastic. Peter Wilde was at the farm earlier in the week and we had a fantastic jump school and then she show jumped great. And then sadly on cross country day, which was Sunday, that just rained and rained and rained and I was sort of in two minds whether to run them and I really felt like Contessa needed a good run just because she's just had a two star, a three star at Bromont short. And then one more big run like this would have been handy for Maryland, five star. But sadly, at about fence seven, I'm not quite sure what happened. I remember coming to the jump and seeing a good stride to it. She started the course really well and I'm not sure if she slipped as she took off or she misread the jump. But I got catapulted in the air and thank God it was a frangible pin jump where you bump into the jump and the rail falls down, which probably saved a much worse look at this trot. Anyway, we went flying through the air. Contessa went flying through the air. We ended in a heap and we're both alright though. The vets checked Contessa, she looks good as gold. I'm a little bit stiff and sore, but no, no injuries. So we'll live to fight another day. Obviously this is not ideal. This is the next day. This is the show jumping. It's a pretty big course and it was very, very hard to get a clear round just because the ground was so muddy and it was a proper sort of meter, 25 meter, 30 course and contessa jumped great. So I think what we'll do, guys is pretty sure there's an intermediate this Sunday at New Jersey Horse Trials in Allentown. Obviously there'd be quite an easy track for Contessa, but maybe after crash a little bit of an easier course would do her good, you know, like for her confidence and mine and I mean that. I think it was just a bit of a freak accident that we had. It was at a really a nothing jump. The jump wouldn't look out of place on an intermediate horse trial. Contessa's been schooling very well. I feel like she's very healthy and sound and jumping well and we just got caught out with an unfortunate ride. But as we know with horses, nothing ever seems to go to plan. And just regroup a little bit here and I'll probably give her a light cross country school this week and another gallop and then I'll try and sort of sneak a squeeze into New Jersey Horse Trials in the intermediate class. This is a bit of show jumping training there with Peter Wilde. We had a good jump school just before the competition. This is Wednesday. Look how nice the weather is. How come I couldn't have been like this at the weekend? Contessa's jumping well. Obviously the big thing with her training is to try and get her to slow down and wait and steady up for the jumps without fighting your hand and seem to get it well at home. And then obviously when she gets to the competition it's a bit trickier. So anyhow, we still got a couple of weeks before Maryland five star and I believe we've got time to regroup, give her a nice confident run this Sunday at New Jersey and school her a couple more times and I believe we'll be in good shape come Jersey, come Maryland five star. Feel like we've got her very, very fit. You can see she's still got good muscle and good weight on, but we've been galloping her every sort of four or five days. Be good to go to Maryland five star this, this year with the idea of trying to be very competitive with the. The time on the cross country. First five star at Kentucky this year I was a bit cautious and went around a bit slow and steady, and now that I've got a bit of confidence that she can make the trip, I feel like we should go there and give it a good shot.