Houghton International Horse Trials

We had a great week in the sunshine at Houghton and were really pleased with all the horses' performances. The organisers did a fantastic job taking so many additional entries after all the cancellations and everything ran remarkably smoothly!

Tall Story didn't put a foot wrong all week.  He did his best FEI dressage to date scoring 47 in a huge and very competitve CCI* class.   He felt brilliant across country and came home clear and inside the time going into the final day in 11th place.  The show jumping was very exciting and we knew that one pole down would drop him a long way down the order.  He jumped a beautiful clear round and finished in 10th place on his dressage score.  A great result for him and his owners, Jan and Peter Price.

Tinkas Time was in the Nations Cup CIC*** section along with a number of the worlds best horses and riders. He did a lovely fluent dressage test to score 49 and went on to jump a super double clear.  He felt brilliant in both jumping phases and made the difficult combinations on the cross country feel easy!  Harry gave him a medium pace run so just time faults dropped him out of the prizes. 

Wild Lone showed great improvement in his dressage test and we were really pleased with the way he worked, although the judges didn't agree with each other and there was a 9 penalty point discrepancy between their marks!  He jumped a lovely show jumping round, just having the middle pole in the treble down and went superbly cross country giving Harry another fantastic ride.  His next run will be in the CCI**** at Luhmuhlen in two weeks so it was perfect preparation. 

Photograph:  Tall Story with Harry and his team, Jess and Helen before the prize giving.