Mallory Striver: A Great Weekend at the AECs

Mallory is competing at the AECs for the first time this year at novice level. After qualifying with a second-place finish at the Area IV Championships, Mallory was heartbroken to learn her horse was starting to develop degenerative joint disease. The AECs will be their last event together before he retires from jumping. They are sitting in eighth place heading in show jumping today.  [AECs Live Scores]

Mallory and Phoenix heading to cross country.

From Mallory:

Hello again, Eventing Nation! It has been a pretty busy past couple of days here at Texas Rose Horse Park, and the weather is humid and hot. Volunteers have been busy making sure everyone is staying hydrated, and they have a large cooling out station out by cross country, which has been beneficial. I’ve got to hand it to the event volunteers; they are really working hard to make this a great and smooth event. It has been a pretty successful weekend so far for Julie Wolfert Eventing. Including Julie and her nine students, seven of us are in the ribbons. That is pretty exciting to have that many students qualify, but then to actually do well is an accomplishment in its own.

Friday was a hectic day of constant running around. I braided early and then lightly lunged my horse to help him stretch out his old man back. He was definitely feeling himself that morning, bucking and exploding into his canter transitions, which reassured me that he was feeling good. I wasn’t feeling too nervous for dressage because since I haven’t been able to jump my horse leading up to this, I really hammered the dressage work in.

All of my hard work paid off because Phoenix was great from the get-go in warmup and carried it right over into his test, earning us a 28 to start the weekend off in eighth place — and my new personal best dressage score. I set it my goal to score in the 20s this weekend, so I was pretty ecstatic to accomplish that. After that I filmed some dressage of the girls from our group, and watched some upper-level cross country. Julie and Aires made easy work of the Intermediate course to move them into third, and then we all headed back to the barns to tuck our horses in for another day. Needless to say, our whole group was pretty satisfied after dressage day.

Cross country day was another exciting day. The weather was absolutely perfect the first half of the day, with temps in the 80s and a breeze. It’s amazing how much cooler it feels with a little cloud coverage. There was a lot of action going on at the park. Upper levels were stadium jumping from 8 a.m. up until the storms rolled in at 5 p.m., while lower levels stormed around cross country all day.

Phoenix and I went early in the afternoon and went clean and inside the time to stay in eighth. The course rode great — definitely a championship course for the level, and the terrain really decided where the jumps were placed. Later in the day, we watched (and drooled over) some nice horses in the Intermediate. Julie jumped a beautiful stadium round, but unfortunately had the last rail down to finish in fourth place, which is still exciting! After the Advanced division got rained out due to that crazy downpour, I skipped out on the competitors party to braid and prepare Phoenix for show jumping.

I’m really excited for stadium today. The course looks fun, and I feel more than ready to finish the weekend strong. I’m sad to see the weekend coming to an end. I’ve literally counted down to this week for the past year, and just like that it has come and gone in the blink of an eye. It has been a great first experience at the AECs, and I know as Texas Rose starts to add its flavor to the event that the next two years will be just as awesome. Go eventing.

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