Canadian eventing athletes commenced the international season last weekend competing at the CIC3*/2*/1* Red Hills International Horse Trials held in Tallahassee, FL. USA.

Heavy rains on Thursday’s opening day may have caused some competitors to tweak their riding style but that wasn’t enough to stop 2012 Olympian Jessica Phoenix of Cannington, ON, from taking the top Canadian spot in the CIC3* division. Aboard Patras VR, Kirk Hoppner’s 13-year-old Trakehner gelding, Phoenix lead-off the competition earning 48.60 penalties in dressage landing them in a tie for 11th place. On Friday Phoenix and Patras VR took two rails for eight faults in their show jumping round bringing their overall score to 56.60 before heading into Saturday’s cross county phase. The pair had a foot perfect performance on the newly designed track by new course designer Hugh Lochore, but took on 20.80 time penalties to finish with 77.40, giving the duo tenth place overall.

“I had a great weekend at Red Hills and the highlight was being surrounded by such wonderful people including my husband and son! My goals coming into this event were to have competitive dressage scores and to go clear in the show jumping and cross country. For the next couple of months we’ll be working on improving our dressage and increasing the fitness levels for all of the horses. We will be looking forward to CIC competitions at Poplar Place, The Fork, the CCI at Ocala and Jersey over the next couple of months. I would like to thank the amazing team of people that make all of this happen, the owners of our horses at Red Hills; Kirk Hoppner, Charlotte Schikendanze, and Anita and Don Leschied, as well as our entire Canadian team support staff including coach Clayton Fredericks,” said Phoenix.

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