1st Showjumping (level intermediate 90cm)

Last Sunday saw the start of our club winter showjumping league. I started off with a few warmup jumps in the practice arena. In fact they went so well, that I only jumped th practice fence 4 times. I started off with a decent sized crosspole, which was then raised. After the second crosspole, I asked for the fence to be made into a vertical. Again I jumped this well, and was going to leave it at that, but was convinced to have one more jump, (with the fence raised again) and this ended up being my best jump.

The course consisted of 9 jumps (which equals 10 Jumping efforts). The double only counts as one fence.

I was last to go in my class(of 7 riders), and needed a double clear to be in with a chance of winning. I had a very nice first round but I knew we had rubbed the 3rd last fence,(I never look behind me when the horse hits the fence. It's a bad habit and strongly discouraged, as doing so throws you and the horse off balance), and as I hadn't heard the pole fall, thought we were still clear. It was not until we jumped the last fence and I was pulling the horse up , that I saw the pole on the ground.

That put me out of the running for the top places, but in this league, every place counts, so I still decided to go for a very fast clear in the 2nd round. As a result, I was the fastest of the 4 faulters with the second fastest time of the day (29.28 secs) which was still a considerable distance away from the eventual winners time of 26.69 secs. These were the only two times under 30 seconds. I eventually finished 5th as there were 4 double clears ahead of me