Junior Riding Team gain an outstanding 6th place

British Inter Schools Eventing Championships: 16th & 17th May 2009

Tom Lane leads Junior Team to an outstanding 6th place.

Over 400 young riders, representing 84 schools from around the country, converged on a slightly wet and very windy Stonar School in Wiltshire over the weekend of the 16th and 17th May to contest the 18th Mini and Junior British Inter Schools One Day Event Championships.

Cranleigh was represented by one team in each competition and it was clear from the first course walk of the mini cross country course that it was going to be a genuine championship test for all the riders.  So it proved to be!

On the Saturday, our mini riders all gave a very good showing in the dressage phase, with the strongest performance coming from our youngest Prep School rider, Ailsa Wates, on her sister’s pony, Toddy.  The show jumping phase produced clear rounds for Izzy Graham-Watson on her brother’s pony, Spice, and Hattie Allison riding her sister’s pony, Smokey!  Borrowed ponies being the name of the game for this team, Bryony Pearson went on not only to produce a lovely clear show jumping round on a pony she was very kindly leant by Holly Partridge just the week before the competition when her own pony went lame, but also to achieve the only double clear in the team by completing the cross country phase clear and within the time limit.  This excellent performance left her in 12th place individually in her section, just out of the individual placings.  Both Izzy and Hattie incurred faults on the cross country course, leaving the team just out of the top ten placings, and Ailsa’s pony just did not quite have long enough legs for the job on this occasion but she will undoubtedly be leading the minis next year on her own lovely new mount!

Sunday saw the turn of our Junior Team, a young team with two of the riders tackling this level of competition for the first time and two others still developing new combinations, although Tom Lane had proved in recent events that he had the potential to take on the best at Stonar this year even with a relatively new horse.  They managed to find a window in the weather for their dressage and Tom started the day in the way he meant to go on, producing the 2nd best dressage test in his arena and incurring only 21.5% penalty points (the lowest being the best): Phoebe Dicks produced her best dressage test yet and both Izzy Graham-Watson and Hattie Allison, happily reunited with their own ponies, scored well too in order to leave the team in a reasonably strong position after this all-important first phase. 

The rain held off for the show jumping and although all of our riders had a fence down in this phase, incurring 4 jumping penalties each, but no time penalties, we were by no means alone in this over a tricky, tightly timed course that was taking its toll on some teams.   Most riders will tell you that it is the cross country phase they look forward to the most and all four riders set off with great excitement, despite the rain that had finally caught up with them, although with one or two doubts about certain questions that they and their ponies would be asked on the way round.  Best of all, however, was the safe return of each one, smiling, confident and clear over every fence!  We had to wait until later in the day to discover whether any of them had incurred time penalties and fortunately both Hattie and Izzy had managed to get the timing just right and Tom had only incurred 3 penalties for a rather speedy round (most riders incurring them for going too slow!)

This left Tom in an outstanding 3rd place out of the 40 riders in his section of the competition, a performance that was undoubtedly instrumental in our final team placing of 6th out of 32 schools, an excellent result for this young team, with Hattie finishing 12th, Izzy 15th and Phoebe 23rd in their sections to ensure this overall result.  Very well done to all of them.

Next weekend will see our riding teams competing for qualification for the 2009 National Schools Equestrian Championships.