EN’s favorite British-based correspondent is back again with a little write-up after the Blenheim CCI3*. Jacky Green of Maizey Manor has enjoyed an especially busy (and successful!) summer this year, and while things quieted down after Burghley, the Maizey team was still out to compete at Blenheim. As always, thanks to Jacky for writing, and thank you for reading.
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Rebecca and Rupert at Maizey Manor, photo by Samantha Clark
From Jacky:
Blenheim recap (Or in hindsight….)
A sunny and warm three day event? In England? Oh Wow! As the temps rose through the week so did the hopes of Team Canada as Rebecca Howard and Riddle Master (Rupert) made a meteoric rise through the leaderboard. One of only three to finish on her dressage score (Francis Whittington and William Fox-Pitt being the other two) it was a really great performance. 65th to 17th to 11th……those stats show just how tough the track was this year at Blenheim.
I drove Rebecca’s truck (AKA Will Faudree’s truck!) up to Blenheim on Tuesday and Irish Sarah followed in her little green buggy with Rebecca in her red estate car and as our much reduced entourage left Maizey Manor it seemed a far cry from the eleven or twelve vehicles that left for Burghley! Having deposited said truck and gang in a nearly deserted field I left in Rebecca’s car, hurtled down the exit road and very nearly went straight through the exit barrier as I discovered her brakes were a tad on the soft side. When I returned with Rodney Powell’s truck 24 hours later the field was a mass of horseboxes, gazebos, picnic tables, dogs, children, horses and riders all basking in the sun. There was a best dressed prize at the jog, although personally I would love to present a worst dressed as there really were some shockers. Predictably in England it was the tweed that won…..
Two days of dressage produced some excellent scores with Marilyn Little-Meredith right up there with RF Rovano Rex on 41, the simply gorgeous Smoke On The Water on 46.4 and (much credit to David O’Connor) the enormous Rockfield Grant Juan with Shandiss Weiora on 49. Shandiss left Maizey Manor for the depths of Cheshire after the Games so we had not seen her in a while but she must have been working on everything the boss had told her as breaking 50 with such a big, young horse was quite an achievement. Rebecca was struggling with Rupert all week as he had somehow managed to pull a muscle in his neck and decided that bending right was simply not an option. At all. With Mr. O’Connor’s legendary help he improved all week and posted a 56 which was disappointing but it was clearly not going to be a dressage competition.
Saturday dawned and it was pretty warm, 26 degrees (C) with no cloud cover and no breeze. It might have been helpful to have some shade in which to cool the horses down (Blenheim is not exactly short of trees I might add) but as usual the support crews were amazing. Irish Sarah looked like she had been swimming for most of the day she was so wet and the cross country started to take its toll. RF Rovano Rex looked to be doing a classy round before he jumped into instead of over the ditch three from home. Rockfield Grant Juan was cruising round until Shandiss rather inexplicably fell off, Marliyn retired Smoke On The Water after the 7 year old found it all rather too much and then Rebecca and Rupert blitzed around to make time. They had a few “moments” but the message was clear: we are doing this, and we are doing it today.
As the poles fell with monotonous regularity on Sunday afternoon, Rupert decided his neck was fine now and bust a gut to jump a great clear and move up yet again. Hats off to Rebecca Howard, she had a great week with a great result and really does deserve it. She did the Maizey Manor Team proud, as did Bettina Hoy who finished in 4th in the 8/9 year old CIC*** with Designer. Rebecca plans to stay on in the UK, she is staying here for a while and has a job riding and competing for Tim Price and Jonelle Richards and who would not be proud to have her as a team addition.
So Team Maizey is pretty much done with the American contingent, the Canadian has stayed and for the rest of the three days its pretty much all about team New Zealand as Caroline Powell is planning to return for most of October. Well, the horses will be here, she seems to be planning to hang out in Holland and France and meet up with them. Irish Sarah is a USA visa refugee so we have adopted her too and finally, to keep a promise, there is just one last thing to say…
I am glad I did not buy and then shoot Arthur as a 4 year old [see Hartpury International report] because then I would have missed the unbelievable bond Allison Springer shares with him, and I also would have missed out on a complete education this summer on how to train a spooky horse to the ultimate level. Allison, I salute you, I learnt so much from you and I have even developed an admiration for Arthur as he has to overcome so many more fears and tigers than the average horse will ever face. Roll on 2013!
