Amber Hoskins Eventing Column
I’m Amber Hoskins, I am a 19 year old amateur event rider from Grantham in Lincolnshire. My current ride Charism (aka Sky) is a 16.3hh 8year old Irish sport horse who I have owned for just over a year. I started eventing Sky last year and after completing three BE90’s, we moved up to BE100. You can follow our season on my blog at www.hoskins-equestrian. weebly.com or follow me on twitter @hoskinseventing
Photo by ES Photography
causing a lack of confidence. It was really nice to be going to Shelford as it’s a local event. It was unusual to not be doing dressage at 8am instead our times were later in the afternoon. We aimed to get her working long and low, trying to stay relaxed in the warm-up. Sadly as we expected we had some freestyle movements going into canter. Overall the test was better than expected but by no means was it good. A few people had told me to go ahead and do have a go at the jumping so off we went to the show jumping arena to warm-up. After mooching around the warm-up trying to learn the course I realised I only had two to go before me. We were able to do a few jumps between hanging onto my neck strap. We decided to go in and give it a go and come back to trot if need be. However she went in the ring and knew what to do. We kept a much more forward canter than before to keep her travelling. This seemed to work well for us as we secured a clear round. This boosted our confidence and ensured we were ready for the XC. We haven’t done any XC since Oasby in March but she was still as keen as ever. The course was lovely and I didn’t really have any concerns. We kept a steady pace for a lovely clear but with 7 time penalties. Over all, we finished Shelford better than I expected
but with more highlights of work I need to do. But all too soon our next event arrived, the following week we were at Little Downham. I was able to get a dressage lesson between the two events to try and eliminate our freestyle movements. I was hopeful we would do a nice test after our lesson, but how wrong was I? Our warm-up was awful; she was ignoring me and running. I started off by trying to achieve what we were doing in our lesson when I realised it was failing, I started to add in a lot more transitions which was still failing. I wasn’t quite sure how to get through the test. We only had one buck into canter but I felt like she could explode at any moment. I came out fully expecting a score in the high 40s. Although when I did see the score I was pleased to see it was below 40. We walked the XC after the dressage. I was a bit apprehensive after hearing it had been causing a few problems the day before but as I walked the course I became more confident that is was something we were more than capable of doing. Again, like Shelford, I only jumped a couple of practice fences. Once we entered the ring she felt like she was a ticking time bomb again. Thankfully once we went into canter she knew her job and felt under control. Although I saw a few dodgy strides, I was able to give her her head and let her jump us out of trouble to another clear. After our double clear at Shelford, I was determined to get another one on our record. We didn’t need much of a warm-up; I gave her a canter around and a quick jump before heading over to the start box. She flew round this technical course with no problems at all. I was so pleased with how she made it seem so effortless. I was a bit too determined to make the time and got 6 time penalties for going too fast. On the bright side I know she has the speed for Novice and it’s another double clear to add to our record. It was lovely to hear so much commentary about the #TwitterEventing group as we flew round. Our next BE outing will be Eland Lodge but I hope to get a bit more training in beforehand, especially in dressage.
Withdrawal Symptoms!
Unfortunately we had to withdraw from our event in April. So we have been taking it easy through April and the beginning of May. Thankfully we were at Shelford on the 26th before my eventing withdrawals got any worse. We were still unsure as to whether we would be doing the jumping phases due to our recent issues
Amber x
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21/06/2013 20:09:22