A rider takes Contessa through the four-star short at Tryon, scoring 71% in dressage with marked improvement from Fair Hill, though flying changes remain weak at 3/10. Cross-country was cautious after tendon injuries; show jumping with Peter Wild's help brought them to fourth place out of 25, a confidence builder toward Bromont and Kentucky.
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This is a video for the Club Contessa. We took Contessa to the four star short here at the mighty Tryon International Equestrian Center, North Carolina I think it is. So we got here early. Which suited Contessa? Actually it was. We arrived on Tuesday, Tuesday morning, gave her a good ride, you afternoon, two rides on Wednesday and then this is Thursday morning was her dressage test. She was the very, very first horse to go in the, in the dressage in the four star short. This is Contessa's second try at the four star short level. I'm very, very proud to say that she went really, really well. Not a, not a perfect performance, but definitely a huge improvement from our last try, which was at Fair Hill a couple of weeks ago. So the dressage you're seeing is awesome. She's just a natural mover, fancy flamboyant and because we got to the show a couple days early and got to ride in the rings and get acclimatized, she was definitely settled. Like she, she gets quite excited and nervous and if you can give her a couple of rides and get her used to the environment, she's, she's much, much better now. The worst part or the hardest part we've had is the, the flying changes in the dressage and I've had my beautiful bride Silver working overtime on them and sadly I couldn't get very good flying changes. So they're in there. I think physically, Contessa finds it hard to do a flying change. She's a very, very long horse and she's got a really, really long canter stride and, and it's the same problem on the cross country and the show jumping is when you go to really collect and balance her in the canter, she, she really struggles to sort of rock back and anyway, once we get the flying changes, we're going to win the dressage because she, I think the, the judge at sea actually had her on 71% which was nearly leading the class. And on top of that, the two flying changes we got were a score of 3 out of 10. So as soon as we get them up to a seven, I mean she's going to be, she's going to be in the low 20s because she's. Her walk, her trot, her canter is lovely. She's extravagant and beautiful. And now the hardest part is actually getting the movements perfect. And I feel like we've got all the movements perfect except the canterhalt on the first center line is a bit dodgy and then the counter half pass are a little bit tough and then obviously the flying changes saying that even though she's I think she's 12 this year, she's had a bit of time off over the years. So she's still green at this level. So I still feel like she's learning these new movements. We needed this run. I'm keen to take her to the four star long competition at Bromont in about four weeks time. This will sort of, this competition will get her qualified for Kentucky hopefully next year. To get to Bromont we needed a nice clear round of the cross country try on and she did it. Well. We've got plenty of footage of the cross country course here coming up and I sort of let her run on a bit. But still didn't go full pelt on her for the cross country. Two reasons why I'm not going really fast. Well, that was one of my flying changes. You can see that was a bit ruddy. Two reasons why we didn't go real fast in the cross country is I'm nervous about her soundness. I feel like she's got had tendon injuries two times now and I feel like that if we go really fast at every competition she's not going to hold up. So I'm a little bit cautious. And then I think when there is going to be a time where we need to go for broke. But it's only going to be a couple times a year at the really, really important competitions when we need her. And to be honest, that's the same with most of my horses. It's not like she's a, she's not a special case like that. The second reason is she's a little bit hard to balance and slow down in the cross country. Sometimes when you go to steadier she sort of fights the bridle. You'll see a little bit more of that later in the video. So this is our show jumping and she is a great jumper. Peter Wild was here to help me warm up. Peter absolutely loves her. And again she was the first horse to jump in the four star short and it was a pretty big course and she jumped awesome. As you can see, she's just a careful horse. She's really good through her body and the hard part. It's the same issue as the dressage in cross country is balancing her and steadying her for the turns. And she sort of almost sort of let me at him and saying that if I feel like if I can sort of softly ride her and not get her too close to the jump she just jumps great. So even though we weren't trying to be that competitive this weekend with a good dressage test and our clear show jumping course, we actually finished in fourth place which pretty impressive just because, you know, it was a big field. I think there was 25 horses in the field. And again we were using this as a bit of a building competition, building confidence and getting her qualified. And to come in fourth place with not really trying to try is pretty awesome. So it was magnificent footing. Unfortunately, we lost a front shoe early on in the course which I think I heard it fling off. But anyway, she lost a shoe early on but the footing at Tryon is beautiful. It's an old golf course and they have irrigation there. You can see every time you see a sort of flicker head, it's sort of Contessa saying let me add that jump. Stop trying to tell me what to do. You got it. You can't sort of pull her mouth too much otherwise she throws her head even more. So to be quite honest, I'm going to do some investigating into doing maybe using some different bits because the next jump you see it was. I was very, very lucky to get over it, to be honest. She was wrestling with my hand and it's mostly off a left turn. So I'm going to play around with some different bits because she needs to come back to me and slow down and balance up without resisting and fighting my hand too much. The good thing is once she sees the jump, she'll jump it. So here you can see it just sat on the left turn, just fighting with me. And again she's still wrestling with me and she just sees it at the last minute. So she's a good girl for jumping because 90% of horses would, would run off in that moment. But she's got a heart of gold. Anyway guys, I'm very pleased. Obviously we didn't have the best run last week last time at Fairhill and a fourth place finish in the four star shorts a credit and we're looking forward to taking her up to Bromont four star long in three or four weeks time. I'll check in with you.
