Georgie Spence’s Express Eventing blog: floorplans and flying changes

This blog is brought to you in association with Georgie’s sponsor Tottie clothing

I’m riding Wii Limbo at the Express Eventing final at Horse of the Year Show on Tuesday, 4 October. He’s an eight-year-old who belongs to Lucy Fleming, Benjamin Chittle and my father Russell, and I’ve been riding and eventing him since he was four.

We qualified for the final after finishing sixth in the Express Eventing contest at Gatcombe. I decided to have a go because I enjoyed taking part in Express Eventing last year at the Royal Festival of the Horse (RFoH). Gatcombe was quite different to that as each phase took place in a different arena, whereas at RFoH it was all in one school.

I thought Wii Limbo would be quite strong at Express Eventing as he’s a good jumper who looks for his fences, reliable and doesn’t get fazed by much. But I thought this would help him to grow up and it was educational for him to see a big crowd at Gatcombe. He coped with the tight arena too and picked up the lines well across country.

Looking forward to the final, I’ve made up a new floorplan for the dressage, including the optional three-time flying changes and pirouettes. My theory is that even if I perform these badly, I’ll score a two or three — that’s better than a 0 for not trying them, right?

But I haven’t wanted to try these yet as Wii Liimbo is competing in the eight- and nine-year-old CIC*** at the Fidelity Blenheim Horse Trials this week and I don’t want him throwing in three-time changes all over the place! So he’ll be having a crash course in the next fortnight.

Once I’m back home, I need to run through the test and video it to sort out the music. I’ve got some ideas of what I’d like and I’m hoping to enlist the help of my boyfriend Tom, whose father just happens to be dressage rider Richard Davison.

Next week I’ll update you on how Wii Limbo gets on at Blenheim and how the dressage preparations are going…

Georgie

We will be running our popular H&H Live service — an up-to-the-minute interactive written commentary — from the Express Eventing final at HOYS, thanks to support from Georgie’s sponsor Tottie clothing. Register for a reminder at www.horseandhound.co.uk/expresseventing2011.

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