Riders Enjoy National Success

Over 175 schools from England, Scotland and Wales were represented at the NSEA National Championships at Addington over the first weekend of half term. This meant almost 800 horse and rider combinations taking part in 12 hours of competition each day, all of whom had qualified through regional competitions throughout the year. Cranleigh was represented at every level in all three disciplines of Arena Eventing, Show Jumping and Dressage with 22 horses and riders taking part – this in itself was a remarkable achievement but to go on and compete with the success they did was a real credit to their hard work and that of Director of Riding, Sophie Spear.

The weekend got off to a flying start when our Intermediate Arena Eventing team finished in the Reserve-Champions position in a competition involving 36 teams, and just one point behind the winning team, but the excitement of this result was almost immediately surpassed when Josh Moore (4th form Loveday) was crowned the individual National Champion for this event, a phenomenal result for someone of his age. The second team in this competition finished in a very creditable 13th too. The Open teams in the same competition finished in seventh and tenth out of the 27 starting teams, with some excellent riding in both competitions from Caileigh Faure, Amelia Shotter, Charlotte Livingstone, Ailsa Wates, Lucy Collecott, Freya Hough, Sophia Elliott and of course Josh. Both Josh and Caileigh qualified in the top 20 individual riders for the elite Arena Eventing class with a bursary from British Eventing on offer to the winner. Caileigh did superbly well in this class to take third place, just two points behind the winner. Our strength in this particular discipline was shown again on the Sunday in the final competition of the Championship; we had qualified two novice teams and finished the day in fourth and eighth position out of 42 teams. Getting a team into the final line-up of eight is the initial aim of every team so to get two into the top eighth is a real achievement: congratulations go to Sam Hollidge, Charlie Johnson, Katie Legister, Will Millard, Lila Millard, Lulu Garlick, Jess Edwards and Flora Philips.

Flora, Will, Katie and Lila had already made the final line-up earlier that afternoon in the Novice Show Jumping, finishing eighth out of the 43 teams in this competition and following the success of the Mini Show Jumpers on the Saturday night when they took to the final jump-off and finished in sixth place out of forty teams. Will Millard had also qualified as an individual and in what was an extremely exciting jump-off he finished in fifth place, with the top 10 riders all within two seconds of one another on time. Our senior riders performed well in the Advanced competition with another eighth place spot to complete a fine weekend of results in the jumping classes.

Not to be outdone the Dressage team took on 29 other schools and finished in sixth place with, with individual third for Jess Edwards, fourth for Charlie Johnson and seventh for Charlotte Livingstone. Jess Edwards had qualified for the individual competition and finished in seventh as one of the youngest riders competing.