This week has been all about Badminton Horse Trials and Cal’s bronchoscopy. Carrie Childs, and her very gorgeous Donner Sara B, qualified for the BE90 Mitsubishi Motors Grassroots Championships at Badminton and kindly invited me to share her adventure.
http://www.britisheventing.com/asp-net/page.aspx?section=1127&itemTitle=BE90+%26+BE100+National+Grassroots+Championships
The build up has been nerve wracking to say the least; as any horsey person will know, the first hurdle after qualifying for any championship, is getting the horse there in one piece. Her preparation had been slightly patchy. Carrie has been blogging for Horse and Hound about the whole experience so some of you will have followed the journey with her.
The first indication of how well Badminton Horse Trials looks after the Grassroots competitors was 4 car passes arrived for friends and family to share the action. I got a lift down with Carrie’s boyfriend, who very kindly got up at 5 to pick me up at 6am (gulp) although his undue respect for the national speed limit and some traffic around Stroud meant we did miss the 9.30am dressage test- whoops.
I then made sure I fulfilled my designated role for the day: keeping mother Judith calm and happy (bubbles started at 10am).
These weren’t the first drinks of the road trip: apparently there had been some Pimms consumed the night before at a welcome reception held in the sponsors pavilion by the iconic Badminton lake.
There was then a bit of a gap between phases and Carrie had arranged for another friend to help with the horse so Judith and I took the opportunity to walk the cross-country course. I thought the course was just beautiful. The ground preparation was quite simply perfect, so no problems there for a barefoot horse. Mud is no problem for my Irish bog trotter, it’s hard ground with damp on top that I occasionally worry about. The course posed some proper championship questions but all were fair and there were alternatives where required. Now I know it always looks easier when one is not riding but I thought there was nothing there that my gorgeous Caltastic wouldn’t jump on a good day, although the total amount of jumping required was substantial. I really loved how the Grassroots course crosses the Badminton 4 star track at some of the classic areas, so there was a Grassroots jump into the lake, a tour of the quarry, a line through the white gates and even a new extension off the famous stone wall corner.
The dressage arenas and the show jumping were set up on the Grassroots corner of the park but still had enough trade stands around the locale to feel buzzy and exciting. The stables and washroom facilities were plenty fine and there was a real sense of camaraderie around the lorry park.
Carrie did pretty well. I know she was disappointed not to produce her usually immaculate dressage; she then had a slight hiccup in the show jumping which, although superbly recovered, put her out of the running for placings. Cross country however she hacked around for a fabulous clear, albeit with some time penalties. She tells the story much better than me in her final blog
The road to the Badminton Mitsubishi Motors Cup: We’ve done it!
All in all it was an amazing day, and really inspiring. I came back absolutely determined that this is an experience I would like for myself and that Cal and I would do our very best to qualify one year soon.
The day I came home Cal had his bronchoscopy. This was much better than last year, there was still some mucous about but only grade 2 this year, and the Carina, where the bronchi split, did look sharper, although still not knife-like. Georgie the vet also did bronchial washings to send off for a neutrophil count.
I went through every range of emotions over the next couple of days. I had been hoping that his airways would be perfect on bronchoscopy, and I could just blame myself for being a wet lettuce, so the presence of mucous completely deflated me and all my newly formed Badminton dreams were on hold.
“May obviously isn’t Cal’s month, he’ll never be able to do a Spring championships…” etc
The results came today. Cal’s neutrophils are 2%, joy of joys, so the steroid inhalers are doing their job, despite withdrawing the inhalers 3 days before the scope, as we would for competition, his airways were still OK.
So it’s official, it’s the rider that needs more kicking. For some reason I can be really bold cross-country but still worry more about knocking a pole off a collapsible show jumping fence. The answer to that is very simple: do more of it, do so much of it that it becomes boring and routine and a series of exercises.
Project Kick Ass starts tomorrow at Somerford with Maddy.
And what more inspiration could one wish for than the mighty Michel Jung, Rolex Grand Slam and 2016 Badminton winner, leading from start to finish on a record completion score. He showjumps and does dressage to Grand Prix levels, as well as eventing to four star, so each phase is really solid. He really is the complete equestrian athlete.
It’s simple, as I know from surgery: intelligent directed corrected practise makes inevitable progress towards expertise.
K.L.F. Kick Like F
