I had spoken to David at training camp and he said “we might not run Colombo cross country at RH2” because he is an older horse and has already been very successful there. Saving his legs for the WEG’s and all.

Dressage warm up felt great. He was moving forward nicely and most important (for him) he seemed very comfortable with his flying lead changes. He wasn’t moving forward in his extended walk very well… and it carried on into the ring. I lost valuable marks for my extended walk… he was behind the leg and that’s where he was staying no matter what I did. When there isn’t a huge crowd he is not as enthusiastic. The extended walk and the last two flying lead changes (of 4) were a coefficient of two. He got 7’s for the first three changes and a 4 for the last one. Late behind. So that was a few marks down the drain.

He can get 9’s for his extended and medium trots. I held back a little in the medium because I wanted to show a clear difference between them both. Unfortunately we had a bobble in the first few steps of extended which cost us. We perform half pass four times in the test, twice in trot and twice in canter. I was a bit too paranoid about the haunches leading and therefor did not have enough bend. The comments from the Judge at the bottom of the test were “capable pair, over all needs more flexibility and lateral suppleness to improve marks”. I agree with her comments after watching the video. David said Colombo should never score lower then 30 in a horse trial. I got 35.5 I am sure I will hear all about it at training camp on Monday. He asked that I bring the test and I will show him the video as well.

Show jumping warm up felt incredible. I got him in deep just like we practised in training camp a week or so ago. He was jumping out of his skin. I was wearing my small spurs due to a rub I gave him the week before. BIG mistake. In a very tight ring with twelve obstacles (a few of which were combo’s) I let him slip behind my leg on a few turns. First fence down was a terrible way to start… I watched the video and I think I was a bit to flat? I did my rein back before the bell and then galloped him on a bit to get him underneath himself… then collected him up before the fence… and… hit it!

At the end of the course was a tight turn to a liver pool 5 strides to an oxer, one VERY long stride to a vertical, one stride to an oxer. David usually says “take the risk on the in by riding very forward and tight to it so you land further into the line” I tried and failed. I wasn’t near tight enough to the base of the first oxer and the next one stride was too much of a reach for Colombo, so he had to flatten and we hit the middle vertical. Same thing happened to me at the last fence at Rolex 2009. Will definitely be working very hard on that from now on. Will make sure and ride him in his big spurs next time…in the mean time I have training camp on Monday and I can’t wait.