Alex Hua Tian's blog: an amazing week at Blenheim Horse Trials

What an unbelievable end to a rather unremarkable season! I left off last week as we were driving up to the stunning Blenheim Palace International Horse Trials. At that point I could only have dreamed of results like these.

Both Maggie (Magenta) and Jeans had had brilliant runs at Highclere Castle two weeks earlier and I was feeling confident that both horses were more than capable of being in the top 20. Elodie had come and helped me pack on the Tuesday and by nine on Wednesday we were well on our way.

The following day was Maggie’s dressage. In the past I’ve struggled constantly with getting her to keep going forwards in the test itself. However, at Highclere I seemed to have cracked it with a new strategy: ride her at home and also in the warm-up without whip or spurs (just a sharp Pony Club kick if she doesn’t go straight off my leg) then five minutes before I start my test, spurs on, then off I go.

Friday was Jeans’ turn. Jeans is about as different from Maggie as you can imagine. He is very sensitive and can get quite tense and upset if you bully him or pressure him too quickly. This year with Jane Gregory we’ve built him a warm-up routine which I do every time I school him. This means that when I come to warm him up for his test even when the atmosphere is electric, he can concentrate and relax into that same routine.

With Maggie, I didn’t have the prettiest jumps over the two fences I had been worried about — the dew pond and the double of hedges. Obviously I was very tempted to go for a fast competitive round with Jeans. However, with Chico injured, he could possibly be my number one for the World Equestrian Games (WEG) next year, and so a qualifying result was the more important. I decided that I would definitely take the long route at the double of hedges and then see how he felt for the dew pond.

However, in spite of that, I can now safely say that I have truly experienced cross-country as it should be. Jeans was absolutely unreal. At the end of the course, there were a couple of very tall and tight corners on five strides, which were catching out a lot of tired horses and out of control riders. Jeans fired in and fired out on four strides — apparently the only horse to do it over the two days!

Both horses pulled up tired but sound and both recovered remarkably quickly. They were soon munching happily on their hay back in their stables being checked over by my physio, Ellie Tisch. Sunday morning heralded a seven thirty trot up, early even for us! So Elodie, Ellie and I staggered out of the lorry at 5:50am to give the two a quick trot to see what we had. Thankfully they were both fine, a little stiff but very sound, so we were happy enough and I whipped up a quick cooked breakfast.

Again, Maggie passed with flying colours and Jeans seemed to trot well but the ground jury thought differently. We were sent to the holding box where the vet asked whether the jury had indicated what the problem was, as he had thought Jeans was absolutely fine. We gave him a quick jog in the holding box, but could find nothing wrong. When I trotted him again I was thankfully accepted….phew (about to go into cardiac arrest)!

I wasn’t show jumping until the afternoon session and so we took advantage of the rest of the morning off to pack as much as we could and have a little sit down and relax. After the morning session, I popped up to the main arena and Lucinda Fredericks very kindly walked the course with me. I thought that the course was quite twisty and technical but it certainly wasn’t the biggest or squarest three-star track I’d come across.

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