Vicky Madsen is a British event rider who currently competes at 4* level on her homebred horse By Crikey (William). William is not your traditional 4* horse being 1/16th Exmoor Pony and 1/16th Clydesdale and a good dose of Anglo Arab from his sire Tracey X. Last year Vicky and William competed at Luhmuhlen 4* coming 20thand this year achieved their highest ever placing at CIC3* coming 5th at Arville. Vicky has one horse competing at this level and last year contemplated selling William because the finances did not add up. William is not a natural dressage horse but he is fast and clever cross country so can often make up for the dressage.
From Vicky:
Well we’re back from our first experience of a French one day event, Tartas, and none the worse for it! Imagine our dismay though when we woke up and it was raining! Properly! Not what we signed up for when we moved down here to the South of France.
I’ll back track a little though and explain the long and tortuous process we went through to enter. Being the tail end of the season and reckoning we could manage with just one run before Pau, I struck upon Tartas as the ideal distance and timing before hand. A French Pro license, required for the class I wanted to do, costs 330 euros, plus the horse’s registration, so we’d have to win a lot of prize money at the one event to justify that. On that basis I asked the organisers if they could “invite” me as an exotic foreign species under my British license, and they were ok with that, as long as I rode HC. Fine by me, but come Wednesday and the publication of the start times I couldn’t find my name. Anywhere. I rang, I emailed, I hunted high and low, and by Friday afternoon with all pleas ignored I had decided to drive down there when I unearthed a listing for me where I hadn’t thought to look, and was actually very pleased with my civilised times!
So, the aforementioned rain beat down on us as we drove there, cue much grumbling from both myself and Stefan. William had also seen fit to take 20 minutes to load (he does that sometimes) in a not-waterproof rug, besmirching his polished self. We found the place and went to meet the organisers, who were charm personified, and what with the rain stopping too we were cheerful as we set off to the dressage to put Jean-Paul’s work into action. The arena was on the deep side, but we’ll have some more of that at Pau please as the two (2!) judges saw fit to mark William with a stonking 40.7 penalties, which is a massive personal best for us at any level! I’ll admit it was a generous mark, but it’s nice to be pleasantly surprised sometimes.
On to the show-jumping and I’d watched some earlier classes and stood next to the over-worked pole putter-uppers who I was busy learning new French swear words from. We also joined in the game of bowling and put two on the floor, and got away with quite a few taps. A wake-up call pre-Pau, for me mainly; I’ve watched the video and I’m sure we could have had a better round if I wasn’t flinging my shoulders forward with such gay abandon. It doesn’t matter that I’ve been told this consistently for the past 3 years, I still need to hear it every fortnight or so for them to stay back where they belong! Happily international show jumper Louise Morley, who I had some great training from this Spring in Belgium, has moved down this way (jammy or what?!) and we’ll organise a couple of sessions before Pau.
And finally to the cross-country! The ground was great, a mix of fields and woods, sandy everywhere, enough to jump but nothing horrifying, just what I was hoping for. I may have ridden a little cautiously for the first field, but as we came into the second and he ate up a half coffin for fun we got back into our groove and enjoyed a cracking round from there on. As the ground was so good I opened him up quite a bit and he loved it, locking on (even to one of the little white fence posts holding up the string – I know Pierre Michelet likes his skinny fences but he’s not gone that far yet William!), coming back when asked, tucking in a little clever stride if needed, just a joy. He was barely puffing when he finished and his respiration rate came down fast, but he was hotter than I’m used to, so we’ll need to keep an eye on that. Despite my rugging efforts his winter coat is coming through, so I will clip him for Pau but I’ll wait another fortnight or so.
His score would have left him in 3rd, and we were pleased to see they value the important things at the prize givings: generous prize money, bottles of wine (two for the really good results!), plaques and rosettes… Bring on the full French license! The bar seemed to have enough patrons, over half of it was dedicated to selling wine and foie gras, they do know how to live well here! Everyone was friendly and helpful, it was a really great day out and I’m looking forward to lots more of the same next year, hopefully with a few more rides!
Thanks for reading,
Vx
