Guest blogger from France: Pau Report

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 1/16^th Exmoor Pony and 1/16^th Clydesdale and a good dose of Anglo Arab from his sire Tracey X. Last year Vicky and William competed at Luhmuhlen 4* coming 20^thand this year achieved their highest ever placing at CIC3* coming 5^th 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.

Photo by Photos Les Garennes

From Vicky:

We’re back from Pau, I’d love to say with a PB and a suntan, but sadly with neither! I drove down on the Tuesday, and was greeted by the lovely Jean-Jacques and Jean-Francois (have I mentioned yet that every other man I’ve met in France is called Jean-something?!), stable managers and parking gurus. They helped me unload whilst they pondered where to park me, being that the 4* lorry park was already bursting at the seams. When they offered me a place on hard-standing, next to Nicolas Touzaint, and with the promise of Mary King and William Fox-Pitt as neighbours on the other side I managed as nonchalantly as possible that that would be just fine by me. Especially seeing as Mary King was in fact delivering my uber-groom for the week, old friend Sally Poppe who evented alongside me in Belgium long long ago when we both rode ponies.

Wednesday was superb, we woke to watch the hundreds, if not thousands, of resident racehorses at the Domaine du Sers training facility come out to work in the morning mist from which the Pyrenees gradually emerged as the sun rose higher. I took William out for a hand-graze but really the pair of us just wanted to watch the racehorses! Meanwhile it got warmer and warmer, and I felt ever so smug as the Brits marveled at the weather and the palm trees. Little did I know…. Wednesday we also had the competitors first briefing, and in an effort to increase attendance the organisers put on a wine-tasting session straight after it, at 12.20 – barely past breakfast time but when in France… After riding Sally and I went to have a look at the cross-country, and by fence three she was banned from making any comments on the fences! We did take a few pictures though just to show some of the dimensions! We also found a lemon tree much to our amusement, not a regular feature on the cross-country courses either of us have met so far. At this stage I kept my thoughts to myself on the course.

Thursday we had the trot up and we were drawn 17th to go in the dressage, which meant a late afternoon slot for us. The trot-up provided an unwelcome first for us when he felt so well coming back towards the Ground Jury the first time he cantered, so we got sent straight back, and although staying in trot he snaked his head down and hopped in his trot, wanting to canter again, so we were sent to the holding box. Heart rate spike or what! The treating vet pinched his tendons and ran hoof testers round both front
feet, and made us trot several times, and couldn’t find anything of concern, so told me to make sure he behaved and kept his head up! Brows were mopped when we represented and were given the nod, although I couldn’t help but feel it would mean the Jury would be scrutinising our dressage test even more closely for any irregularities in the trot work.

As we got ready for our test the rain started coming down, and we were rather wet by the time our turn came. Just before we went in he changed twice out of his counter-canter, and I didn’t really have time to sort it out as I would have liked, but I just had to tell myself it would all be fine and that I KNOW we are capable of cantering a half-10m circle in counter canter as long as we are relaxed enough. Off we went down to the arena, and he started well in the test, maybe not as light in the hand as we can sometimes achieve at home, but not at all far off the best we can expect at the moment in competition. The extended walk wasn’t as good as it can be, but he halted quietly and rein-backed smoothly. Unfortunately he struck off on the wrong lead, so we hurriedly corrected, and went into the canter sequence. The first extension followed by change went ok, then the counter-canter was cautious but we held it, the medium on a circle wasn’t really strong enough and the change after that we completely fluffed! It went something like bounce, bounce, buck, change! The final 5 loop serpentine, worth 40 marks, again was more about survival than I would have liked it to be, but the counter-canter held, and the 4th change was better than the 3rd, which was late behind. I looked up at the score board after our last movement and was pleased to see 7, 6, 7 for our final centre-line, so was rather disappointed to see an average score of just over 56%, giving us 64.8 penalties. On the other hand a year ago he did all his changes cleanly in the same test and I was delighted with 60.8, so perhaps it’s a measure of my higher expectations?

That evening I ran the course by myself, stopping to look at the trickier fences and combinations (not catch my breath or anything!), and I very nearly got shut on the racecourse, arriving as the fences were being closed at 1 minute to 7, not having realised the place was locked up at night! Later on Sally and I went to the evening entertainment put on by the event, and a very good time was had by all, there may have been some dancing on tables by Olympians young and old.

Friday the weather continued to be disappointing, and worsened as the day went on. I walked the course again, and was looking forward to riding it, although I felt quite strongly that the first section to fence 6 was very technical, and the last section from 23 to the end, with the middle being very big and galloping type fences, which might almost cause us to switch off and be caught unawares when we came back into the tricky last bit. The exception in the middle was the big bounce of angled brushes into water
which was concerning me a bit. Friday I also took the time to try a Butet dressage saddle with a flat seat, and whilst I felt rather lost in it William was a bit of a revelation in it, loving the flatter panels and
doing some really lovely work. Even though it was 2nd hand the price tag was way out of our range at the moment, but it has spurred me on to find one that he likes as much over the winter. He was also clipped ready for Saturday.

During Friday night I woke several times to hear the rain pouring down, I don’t think any of the riders slept much at all! Dawn was grim, and in fact the 2* riders were set off cross-country before it was fully light, and many of the early ones faulted at the water, causing a fence there to be removed. Plenty of long faces and muttering could be heard around the stables, and I can’t say I was bursting with enthusiasm to ride round the track in those conditions, especially when I went out to see how the ground was holding up in the waters and I saw how wet the ground was. William had a pre-xc massage from Karen Gunn, and as we tacked up the sun came out, lighting up the event and everybody’s mood. I watched William Fox-Pitt’s path-finder round on Chilli Morning on the cttv in the stables and of course he made it look easy, just having to help the horse a bit at the first and third waters. My William warmed up well, really using himself over the fences and on his toes. As we went over to the start we both could feel the adrenaline rising, and we set off well over 1 and had a lovely forward shot to 2. 3 was already a big test, up a huge bank then a few strides to see and jump a brush-topped palisade running down on 5 or 6 strides to a corner at 4. We didn’t have a great line to 4 but he took it on, taking the flag with him. From on top it looked to me like his front legs went either side of the flag, and as we galloped away I was trying to decide whether we would have been deemed to have gone through the flags or not, as I didn’t want to gallop round 11 minutes of 4* track to find out we’d been eliminated at 4! I got it together to ride properly for 5, an enormous table which he jumped like a star, then we collected for the turn to the first duck going to the water. We landed and turned, and my planned neat four strides turned into 5, leaving us too close with too little impulsion to jump the 2nd duck: 20 penalties. I circled away and jumped it 2nd time, but pulled him up from the big log and drop into water. I’d dithered coming in with my doubts about fence 4, and the stop just confirmed to me that my head wasn’t in the right place to tackle a track like that. As it turned out the fence judge at 4 had deemed us to have cleared it, but there you go, the doubt had already done its damage.

Of course I was disappointed initially, but as horse after horse got ridden back to the stables having been pulled up I started to realise what problems the course was causing. The fence analysis makes interesting
reading that’s for sure! Fence 6 claimed more than its fair share of victims, causing 16 of the 62 starters to have a fault of some kind, and in the end only 33 finished. The weather turned grim again, but we were still able to host a drink for all the friends who had come and supported us, even if the mood wasn’t quite as celebratory as we had hoped for when organising it! The next day Sally left quite early as Mary had retired on Kings Temptress and been eliminated for a very unlucky, but thankfully harmless, horse fall when Imperial Cavalier stuck his leg in his martingale and failed to get it out in time to land over a straightforward fence. I packed up and was able to wander around the trade stands a bit, in addition to commiserating with some other riders including Buck Davidson who I’d not met properly before. I saw Jean-Paul Bardinet who has been helping me with my dressage, and discussed with him the idea I’d had of running at a CIC** in three weeks’ time in the south-east of France, just to cheer ourselves up before the winter. I don’t want to dwell on what’s happened, so if British Eventing and the event give us the go-ahead I think we’ll do that.  Pau may not have been our finest hour, but we’re in one piece and able to
think of alternative plans, for which I am really thankful!