June 2010

Since my last report of June 13 not much has been happening on the horse front as I have been away overseas on holiday with not a horse in sight!

We returned from our holiday on the 11 July and I was straight back into riding although feeling every mouthful of pasta and gelati I had eaten whilst overseas (yes we went to Italy). I competed both horses at PRARG on the following weekend 18 July. Whilst I knew this would be a bit of an ask with my competition horses having only been lunged whilst I was away (huge thanks to Kirsty Phillips owner of Remi London Belle who did this for me) this was my last opportunity to gain a qualifying score for Elite Waldo Pepper to take him to the NSW State Dressage Championships at novice level.

He already has qualifying scores for preliminary as does Remi London Belle for medium. Waldo did a lovely novice test without fault. One judge placed him 3rd with a score over 65% (which was what I needed to qualify at NSW) and the other judge had him 16th with a score of 57% and 16th. So he ended up on 61% and 9th. Very disappointing and a perfect example of what the sport of dressage needs to fix. This sort of inconsistent judging is unacceptable at any level. Waldo has never scored less than 60% in any test he has ever done and people who saw the test thought it was a 70% plus test. What can one do - this is the sport and one goes on to the next event and hopes for better judging.

Pip (Remi London Belle) went around the medium test but with only barely a weeks work her high powered attitude to life was a little bit too much on display. It was fairly marked at 58.33%.

The following Monday I caught up with Rozzie Ryan for coaching on both horses. As always these lessons were motivating and encouraging as well as hard work. She was very complimentary about Waldo and agreed that this was a horse who should be attracting scores of 70%. Hopefully we strike some more judges who agree with her! Pip went well in her lesson and we were able to make real progress with her half pass and flying changes. It is so exciting to see the steps towards an FEI test taking shape.

Yesterday should have seen me competing at the Qld State Young Horse Championships with Waldo. Unfortunately last week I came down with the flu and as I write this am still bed bound. So despite all my desire to be there it was simply not to be.

We have sold our lovely mare Elite Lalique and have just bought into work Elite Geronimo a three year old gelding by Gymnastik Star out of our Graf Landau mare.

Our mare Elite Viva whom we sold in May is performing well under her new young rider and has already won and placed in interschool dressage.

My beautiful Rotspon gelding Rouge Homme appears to be making a full recovery from his tendon injury and I hope to have him back in work in September.

We have just taken delivery of a 4 horse truck whom we have christened Frank. He is a step up for both horses and owners in terms of comfort and I hope this makes it easier for us to travel to the bigger competitions interstate. His maiden voyage will probably be to the NSW State Dressage Championships in Tamworth. Hopefully I have my truck license by then or otherwise Peter will be doing all the driving.

On the coaching front I had an intensive coaching schedule before I went away as 2 of my young riders had heavy competition schedules whilst I was away at State interschool championships and at a national level. I would like to congratulate both Pip McKee and her pony Jimmy Wilson and Anna MacMillan and Wags who are both doing a super job. Anna has been selected as a Queensland State representative to compete at the National Interschool Championships to be held in Sydney in September.

I also coach a number of eventers in dressage and it is always exciting to see them lift their dressage scores as usually this helps them in to the placings.

Congratulations Trudy Freeman who last weekend at the Fig Tree Pocket event placed 3rd in the one star event on Room to Zoom. This was largely due to her improving her dressage score and placing 2nd in the dressage phase only being knocked back to 2nd with some time penalties XC.

I also had yet another rider ask me what I feed Pip to make her so shiny! She is an excellent advertisement for Pryde's feed!

Regards

Karen Crommelin