Again yet another scorcher of a day in East Anglia and another trip to Great Yarmouth for the annual Area 14 Showjumping Qualifiers.
Showjumping has never been Finn Valleys strong point in the past but with the ever-increasing cost of eventing nowadays we are starting to see more and more riders turning to show jumping for their competition fix. This year we went with a slightly depleted team of novice and intermediates and a strong open team but all competitors had fun. Despite the drought that we have seen this year the ground was not too hard and the builders did take the conditions into account when building the courses. This year, however, saw an unexpected problem that caught a lot of riders out, flowers!
East Coast has done a great job in dressing the fences that so much so the horses were shying right, left and centre to avoid the scary flowers on the fences.The teams all finished well with the intermediate team of Liz Barlow, Krystina Fish, Rebecca Rice and Carolyn Hammond coming sixth and the Open team of Julia Smith, Laura Nicholls, Jane Cragie and Liz Barlow winning the class with some very impressive jumping. This results means again this year we will have our Open Showjumping team at the final at Lincoln in September.The other non-qualifying team of Gill Lloyds, Catherine Monk and Annabel Brown as well as Rachel Hadingham all had mixed fortunes but finished having had fun.
Many thanks for all that travelled to Somerton to either ride or support and good luck to the Open team at Lincoln.
Intermediate Team (Liz Barlow, Krystina Fish, Rebecca Rice, Carolyn Hammond)
Open Team (Laura Nichols, Liz Barlow, Jane Craige, Julia Smith)
Report by James Smith
