11th May - Golden pony helps bring Heythrop to victory at Royal Winsor!

An exciting last minute outing to Royal Windsor for the Inter-hunt relay. I joined into the Heythrop team along with Nickie White, Tom Gittins and James Loffet.

Taelor Daniells very kindly said i could take her horse Ballycullane Dundee and didn't he just love it!

A Course of just six fences set with various sharp turns with two particular corners that were there to be cut to shave off every second possible.

In the first round we were drawn to relay against the Surrey Union hunt. This team were on good form and beat us after our team tactics failed. Each rider was planning to ride a steady but clear round but when riding a very green 5yo at his first show Tom Gittins had his work cut out.

Thankfully we scraped through by just 0.5 sec. The top 8 teams went through for another round.

We were riding on the Royal Box side once again and had rapidly changed team tactics this time....We were leaving nothing to chance and were going to go as fast a we possible could!

It was very exciting i started, and Dundee flew round the jumps on flying form giving them all plenty of height - as i jumped the 6th fences a set of Planks! i then handed the hunting crop/baton to team mate Nickie White who then followed up with a clear to then make a good change over to Tom Gittins who's horse improved on every round - gaining so much confidence he then jumped the last to hand over to James who whipped round to help us on our way to a win!

This then put us comfortably into the semi final which we went on to win. Dundee put yet another great round going clear once again.

It was the final and everyone was very excited to be there so we were just all going to "Go for It". It was fast and exciting and each horse came into their own jumping fantastic, the other team on the other hand had rather too many rails down picking up 5 time penalties for each rail which proved expensive.

We managed to complete our round in just 1.21 sec's for all four team members to complete. Our original time was 1.38 sec. So we had really up'ed our game.

It was a great experience and when we won the final it was fantastic! Taking home £1000 prize money which went to the Heythrop Hunt.