Showjumping Victory Again

Well, last Sunday we had the 3rd leg of the ShowJumping League. I was again on Duty so had to help build the course, which meant an early start on Sunday Morning. The course took an age to build, but it was eventually completed, shortly before the scheduled start time of Midday.

After this effort, it was time to tack Teachai, put on the chaps, Jacket and Tie and go and warm up.
The first couple of warmup jumps were over the crosspole, and then we moved on to the vertical practise fence. We jumped a couple of times with just the vertical and then a backbar was added.

I was taking a break, allowing the people at the lower grades to warm up. After this, one of the Open Riders (A former Instructor of mine) was practising, and I see her jump a fence, and next thing I know she's on the floor. After she remounts, she jumps the fence a couple of times and leaves it at that.

I enquire as to what height the fence is at, and am told it's a Metre and 'No' by my current Instructor. He then says he's going to put it down to 80 cm, and we tell him it's meant to be 90 cm for our Grade. He relents and puts the fence up to 90 cm. I jump the vertical a couple of times, and then the parallel (vertical with a back bar), and am now happy so I head off to the next arena.

The rider before me heads indoors to the course, and I decide I want to watch, just to get an indication of how the course is jumping, and any potential problems. All is going well, until the horse puts in a stop at the last fence, which results in the rider somersaulting over the horses head. (Well at least one of them cleared the fence). The only thing i can put this down to is the pole on the ground being a different colour to the rest of the fence.

The rider decides not to remount, and leaves the arena, so it's now my turn. I salute the judge, and then canter off. We hit the second fence , but it stays (I actually looked back to check, which is something you shouldn't do , and I don't normally do either). Fortunately the next fence was quite a distance away. Theres a sharp left turn after fence 3 so I jump the fence on the right hand side and turn my head left while in the air. Jumping the fence on the right makes the turn shallower, and turning the head shifts your weigh to the side you turn to, which normally results in a correct canter lead. This worked beautifully, so we jumped the related distance followed by the double. Again another left turn, but not as sharp, and this time I felt that we were on the wrong canter lead. I didn't want to change anything, so just left it up to the horse to sort out. We then cleared the last fence.
The second round went pretty well (The course was shortened so that we didn't jump the last 3 fences), and we cleared all the fences in just over 40 seconds. I was the only rider on a double clear, with just 1 rider after me. They knocked a fence in the first round, which meant I had won the competition.