Miss Lulu Herself - The Fork at Tryon - Sept ‘23

This is a video for Bonnie Step. Well, Bonnie, we've hit form at the right time. Ms. Lulu won the advanced division at Trion or the Fork International this weekend in Tryon. She was bloody good in all three phases. Obviously we were using this event to prepare her for the major goal, which is the four star long at Morven park, which is in, I believe, four weeks. Anyway, we got here obviously on Thursday and the first ride she was a raving lunatic when we were sort of getting her first ride straight off the trailer. And then the second ride she was a little bit better. And then I woke up really early in the morning for the dressage and hopped on her and schooled her around a bit. And every time I rode her, she got a little bit more and more relaxed and she put in a pretty good dressage test. The flying changes you'll see in a minute are still. They're clean, but they're a bit. They're a bit rough, to be honest. But she finished in fourth place after the dressage. Marilyn Payne, the Olympic dressage judge, is our judge and she gave us some good scores here for the trot work, good scores for the canter, and dinged us on a bit of resistance in the flying change, which is sort of understandable. Most importantly though, Bonnie, she gave us a fantastic round of show jumping and obviously the best part is the cross country. She was absolutely unbelievable. She was brilliant in the cross country and she won the class. She's slowly but surely turning into a very seasoned campaigner and, you know, at the beginning of this year we were just scraping around the advanced and now she was the fastest horse in the division. So very, very pleased with her. Can't wait for Silver to pop this baby out because poor old Lulu's been putting up with me the whole time, trying to teach her flying changes and be good to get Silva back on board, helping me train her up a bit because obviously the dressage she gets a little bit hot, but it's getting better. But she's still. That's her weaker phase. She's obviously very, very good in the show jumping and turned into a very good cross country horse and she's getting faster and more fit. So I think the future's bright with her. And she's still young. I think she's only 10 still. So anyway, we'll get Dr. Peter Blowner to come over and have a look at her this week, make sure she's in good health. There's one flying change, it was a bit of a buck, but it was Clean. I think they gave me about a four for it though, unfortunately. It was good seeing you the other day. Looking forward to getting down to Aiken this winter and being able to catch up with you a bit more regular basis mate. But we, you're never off our minds. So anyway, the next couple weeks with Lulu is that I think we need to put a couple more gallops into her and start really focusing on the four star test that we have at Morven park in a couple weeks. I feel like she's pretty fit. Like she's, she's got a little bit of a short stride for the cross country but funny enough the bolder and braver she gets the more and more she's galloping across the ground. And I mean if you look at the results, she was by far the fastest horse in the, in the advanced division on cross country day which usually she's sort of the green one that you have the O slow on and now she's zipping around beautifully. If all goes well at Morven park we'll look at doing a five star on her next year somewhere. So it's obviously been a long road since she was a 4 year old so obviously the show jumping and man she jumped good. There was hardly a clear round in the class so we're in fourth place after the dressage and then after this fantastic show jumping round she, she popped into the lead and then so that was on Friday and then on Saturday. Today was the cross country and she was awesome. She's so careful and sharp and you know you don't need any fancy tricks with Ms. Lulu. She's always been an exceptional jumper. Sometimes she jumps really, really high and lands a little bit steep so you sort of got to land and accept accelerate away from the jump. We've got two Lulu babies on the ground by Harold three. They're only foals, they're still with their mothers, surrogate mothers. So they're a bit small and scrawny Bonnie but they hopefully have the same attributes as Lulu. Pretty good round, eh? And then this is the highlight of the weekend. Cross country went at 9:30 this morning. The sunlight was a bit of a prick. Like you had to jump a lot of these early fences straight into the sun and doesn't look too bad there but it's a bit hard to see the jump as you flying up to it. You know, I really feel like if I can get the dressage a little bit better she could be a good, you know, a good chance for a top, top placing at Morven park, and I think my key is to try. And the speed I'm going here, cross country would be, you know, about four star speed. So if I can keep this speed the whole way around the track, then she'd be pretty close to the time you see her ears are pricked and sort of getting towards the later stages of the course. And she's still jumping really good, eh? She's a nifty little horse. Anyway, Bomb. Like I said, it was fantastic catching up with you earlier this week and you should be proud of this little horse. She's jumping with the big boys now.