Double 2nd means we've qualified for the Sunshine Tour SJ too!!

27 April

With the excitement of Arena UK's SJ Championships still in my head, I decided I couldn't wait a whole year for the next one. I wanted to do another championships soon!

Trailblazers would be awesome BUT.... I wasn't going to stay up at Addington for a week - couldn't afford to!! So I looked again at Sunshine Tour...

We have qualified for the elementary dressage on Thursday 11th September [now just need to get in before the ballot!] and I was over the moon to discover that the senior 75cm SJ championship was Friday MORNING - AMAZEBALLS! New mission - try and qualify for the Sunshine Tour 75cm!

And it just so happened that Badgworth had a qualifier coming up

To be fair, Badgworth had lots of Sunshine Tour Qualifiers in April but I was working most of them in the kitchen..... but here we were .... Sunday 27th approaching, I wasn't in the kitchen and so I booked on to jump.

I wasn't really expecting to qualify in our first attempt. We aren't quick and although we'd had a play at jump off turns in my lesson last week and I was pleased that with our newly fitted and balanced saddle we were confidently making turns and travelling - I'm still working on our acceleration. Plus there were 9 in my classes so I was like, just have some fun and try some of the new stuff we'd learnt.

I couldn't decide whether to cut in between two sets of jumps twice or go around. It was a tight squeeze and would mean slowing to get between. Plus it seemed like people were going around without losing too much time so after discussions with Jayne we decided push on and go for it. I didn't see anyone else cut through all day and only one person took ONE of the turn on Weds - and she was on a 13hh kamikaze pony!

We decided then that the key was to keep the turn small between 7-8 and then for fences 10 to 11 - instead of cutting between fence 3 and 7 to just go around 3 really tight ride it straight across and jump 11 on the angle.

And so we busted our moves and I was delighted to jump into the lead on 29.44 seconds. However, I was pipped by the last competitor - kid on a pony, who I actually like as I'd spoken to her from the kitchen buying trailblazer tickets the week before.

AND SO WE QUALIFIED FOR SUNSHINE TOUR !!!

Try that again in the 80cm!

I then entered the 80cm as I wanted to have a bash at the turns with the fences up a bit. This time I had nothing to lose. The 80cm class is on Saturday at Hickstead and I'm not going to be able to make that, so now I could go for the turns again and afford a knock down - no pressure just fun.

We were last to go in the class so I knew what the time to beat was - 28.88. Freddie was flagging a bit in the heat as we set off but we busted the same moves again, you can probably hear from the audio that I tried hard with lots of "Good Boy" and "Go-on"s. As we jumped fence 11 I thought I saw 27 seconds on the clock and rode hard as we landed for the finish line but because I was looking up at the clock, Fred was a bit wobbly and we finished 29.66. DARN IT! BUT taking 2nd place we qualified also for Sunshine Tour 80cm class.

Super excited I came home, uploaded all the scores and then submitted my results for both classes to Sunshine Tour. They promptly confirmed my codes to enter the championships….. Woohoo! ….. Which is where the funny bit comes in…..

As I was looking at the timetable again to see if I could work out roughly what time the class might start and finish on the Friday, I spotted some text ahead of the table detailing the various sections for the competition. It said….

Junior Riders Only - 16 years and under on 1st Jan [and have their own section]

Senior Riders Only (17 years or over as of 1st January 2025). No competing against those pesky junior riders on their whizzy ponies!

Exclusive Veteran Championships – For riders 45+ (as of 1st January 2025)

HAHAHA – I’M A VETERAN!!! I haven’t stopped laughing about it since! And I have 4 months now to work on our speed so that I can do my best to compete against my fellow fossils!

Fred however, was just delighted to be able to “go fast, jump stuff” rather than doing the endless boring circles that are apparently “never circly enough 😃”

An interesting comparison

With what can only be described as too much time on my hands on the Monday I cut both my videos together to see where I lost time in the 80cm round. I figured I wasn't as tight through the 7-8 turn. HOWEVER, when run together. I was actually QUICKER through that turn but as Fred was flagging after fence 9 we lost the time from fence 9-11. Ironically, if you combined the 80cm J/0 round to fence 9 to the 9-11 from the 75cm round, we make up the second.

The photos