Joosie Does France

[joosie]

jump photos

The photographer from my first two competitions has put his pics up on the website, yay! Think I may buy the first two of these. I've never been able to get pro pics of me before so I'm a bit too excited about this :redface::giggle:

ETA - Crit welcome! I know what my faults are, but extra input is always appreciated

 

[joosie]

Feb 15, 22, 25 - training shows

On the 15th we went on my first outing in the lorry, to a training show, which is when the main venues in the region open up their arenas and build courses for horses and riders to train over. They’re open to all horses who will be competing in the 4-, 5- and 6-year-old categories this season, and are mostly attended by the pro and semi-pro riders and trainers like my boss. Aside from the jump training itself, they also give the 4-year-olds a chance to get used to being at competition venues with lots of other horses and exposing them to the sights and sounds that they’ll experience when they start competing for real in a few months.

Izzy’s got two 4-year-olds this season, two mares belonging to her parents. They both have a good head on their shoulders and a good attitude and are at pretty much the same stage in their training. Neither of them are particularly spooky and they don’t think twice about the garish fillers and things. They do have their differences though – Tricks has better flatwork than Toscane but Toscane has the bolder jump, yet she is easily distracted between jumps and tends to lose focus, while Tricks has very good concentration and is really tuned-in to the rider. Anyway, they were both very chilled out considering it was their first outing (they were both taken out and about for lessons and schooling last year but hadn’t been around so many horses before). The jumps were about 80cm and the course had a couple of doglegs and a 4-stride double but nothing challenging – they both had a couple of poles down and Tricks had one refusal but overall they both jumped very nicely.

Izzy’s 5-year-olds this season are two mares and the stallion. Riayade is definitely the least talented of the three – she jumps clear at around the 1m mark but her front legs are messy and she doesn’t put a great deal of effort in, and she’s also a headshaker which means she tends to lack focus between jumps and doesn’t pay as much attention to the rider as she should. On this occasion, despite being an absolute monster in the warmup with some rather impressive rearing and broncing (she really hates horses coming up and overtaking her from behind), she jumped nicely around the 80cm course and didn’t have any poles down at all.

The other two have a lot more scope than Riayade so they jumped in the other arena, where the jumps were between 1.05 and 1.15m and included some more difficult combinations and wider spreads. They were set up to be jumped as a course, but being a training show the riders can choose what they do and don’t jump, and do certain fences again if they feel they want to do them better. The other mare, Rena, jumped beautifully around the full course with a couple of poles down and was tuned in to Izzy from start to finish. Paddy, the stallion, did some fantastic broncs in the warmup but was angelic around the course – again, he had a few poles down but was jumping nicely, he’s only 15hh but he’s got a fantastic springy jump to make up for it and very good form. I hadn’t seen them jumping properly before and I really enjoyed watching them go round. :smile:

From my point of view, the outing was also a great chance for me to watch the pros at work. Many of the riders there specialise in producing youngsters, and it’s very interesting to watch them ride, especially some of the 4-year-olds who were much greener than ours and there was rather a lot of “challenging behaviour” going on! I enjoyed trying to work out just what the riders were doing to deal with a certain problem – to the naked eye it all looks rather effortless, but you know there’s so much going on! Some of these riders are seriously impressive.

 

[joosie]

Feb 17 - sunny hack with Picasso and Jam

First hack photos from France! We do get sun in Normandy occasionally :smile:

 

[joosie]

Sunday 20 Feb - more jumpies with Jams

Last Sunday I went showjumping with Jam for the third time.

We went to do the 85cm class, and took with us a livery to do the crosspole and 60cm clear rounds with her horse. Usually at that venue they do the two clear-round classes in the smaller school and the 85cm and 1.05m classes in the main arena. So when we got there I tootled up to the main arena to see if my course was open to walk yet – but the jumps looked waaaay bigger than 85cm, so I went back to find Izzy and said that they must have changed the schedule because they were putting up a big course in there. It transpired that they’d had a lot of late entries for the 1.05m and 1.15m due to another competition on that day being cancelled at the last minute, so those were starting first-thing in the main arena and the 85cm wouldn’t happen in the other arena until the clear-round classes had been done. I may not have been riding until lunchtime, which wasn’t ideal as we’d kind of been planning to be back home at around midday! Hence, Izzy suggested that I entered the 1.05m instead :help:

The biggest courses I’d jumped before were a couple of 90cm-1m classes, where only the final jump was a full-up metre. Izzy assured me that Jam would look after me, and I believed her, so I said could we walk the course and then I’d decided if I wanted to do it or not! So she walked it with me, and my goodness, those jumps were scary from the ground! Very scary, especially the spreads, and there were also a couple of rather tricky turns and doglegs in there as well. But for some reason I found myself wanting to take a stab at it... so I entered! :unsure:

Basically, Jam was a star. From the moment that bell rang he took the most excellent care of me :inlove: He sailed over those jumps for me, he was getting very strong in places but he did listen to me and he did his utmost best to make sure those poles stayed up – there were a few times we got in too close and a few we took off too far back, but there was NO WAY he was going to touch one of those poles, cos he is Super Mr JimJams and he is a dude!! I had a whale of a time, it was the most tremendous fun and you should have seen my face as we trotted out of the arena, I was grinning so wide my face was cracking :biggrin:

It was a 2-phase class but I’d been so focussed on getting round in one piece that I kind of forgot I was against the clock with the last 4 jumps :giggle: and there were already 11 clear rounds faster than me so we weren't going to be placed, but that was hardly the point, cos I had SURVIVED I had so much fun, and I even remembered to follow Izzy's advice about lines and stuff! :giggle:

There's a couple of pics I really like, so I'm thinking I may treat myself! (am thinking fence 3 and the final pic). Again, crit welcome if you wish.

Fence 1

Fence 2

Fence 3

Fence 7, first part of double

Second part of double

Fence 8

Fence 9, water tray

Turning to fence 11

 

[popularfurball]

, braver than me haha!

I like the pic of second part of double