This weekend one of my riders from the Hampshire College riding team competed at the IHSA Zone final championships. After a difficult lesson the day before, my rider was a bit nervous going into this horse show and even more so once we got there and she saw how tough the competition was. However, she kept her composure and drew a great horse for her class.

After walking the course and talking about the best strategies for riding it she was ready to get on and compete. The course included a couple tricky bending lines followed by some simple single fences and a basic line. After riding the first and more difficult parts of the course really well I hoped her confidence had started to return, but just as she was coming to the 3rd to last jump the horse just slowed down a bit and she ended up having a bad jump. She regained the canter stride for the last two jumps but the competition was so good that just a single mistake meant that she came in 6th place and didn’t qualify for Nationals.

While this was disappointing, we talked things through and in the end agreed that it had been a great learning experience and we’d hope to get another chance next year.