ESPC at Pony Club Champs 2021

ESPC at Pony Club Champs 2021

Congratulations to all those that qualified and competed at the 2021 Pony Club Championships!

We started with representation in the Tetrathlon with a Junior Girls team of Lola Woollard, Lula and Coco Isaac who did amazingly well to take Team 6th – Lola did a cracking clear round on a tough cross country course. 

In the Intermediates we had Cora Taylor and Duncan Morgan, both had been at the Senior International Tetrathlon the weekend before and for Cora and Vincent it was a run too soon, Duncan and TJ took 12th in their class. 

All partied hard in true Tetrathlon style, the theme was The Olympics as probably difficult to tell from the photos! Tolly and Georgina provided important support to our hard working competitors. 

As our TET members headed back to Sussex Evelyn Dzogan headed to Offchurch for the Novice Dressage where she did a fabulous test for 66.67%. We arrived to see them go and I hope inspired to qualify next year, with a team would be better still. Well done Evelyn, Miranda and Purdy!

Duncan and Lux had Open show jumping on the Wednesday after a disappointing first round of 12 Lux jumped clear in the second round that stood at 1.20m ! They were then asked to join Crawley and Horsham to make a mixed Area 11 Open team the next day. 

That afternoon Fleur Jeffrey’s arrived for the Individual 90 Eventing and the rest of the Open Dressage team , Katie Hipkins, Tia and Kiera Whiteman. Fleur did her dressage test that afternoon. Offchurch had 6 arenas going at once and a massive warm up area the other side of the road that ran through the park with 3 show jumping and warm up arenas at the end, it all looked very impressive as you walked through from the stabling and camping area, fortunately they ran buggy’s that you could jump on if room to catch a ride down, certainly our number of steps rose rapidly whilst there!

The next morning the dressage team were some of the first on, Katie’s horse was in an arena next to the cross country and found it all too much, Lux got a fly in his ear and ended up with very erratic scores as a result! Kiera and Tia both put in strong performances always difficult when you are early on, the overall team position was disappointing but who knows what next year will bring. Lux went on to jump 2 rounds finishing on 4 faults with team taking 10th place in the Open team competition.

That afternoon Fleur jumped for a lovely clear show jumping and then went cross country, a tricky combination resulted in penalties but they flew round the rest of a challenging championship course and should be very proud of what they achieved.

Duncan and Lux were lucky enough to secure a 100 Eventing place on the back of his qualification in 2019, thank goodness for TET friends as we would have felt like Billy-no-mates with everyone else heading back to Sussex, I don’t think I ever saw Duncan on his own, another shameless plug for TET. So Friday afternoon Lux put in the dressage performance we knew he had in him 24.2, whether it was the fact he had a large audience to perform too who knows, as a result he lead his arena. 

The next day was Show Jumping and he touched a pole, Cross Country is where he is least experienced and this was to show with one stop taking him off a podium finish . This is not a plug for Duncan but his rounds and others are on Equireel on Facebook and they give you an idea of what the courses were like for both Tetrathlon and the 90 and 100 Eventing, especially for those thinking of moving up next year, please have a chat with anyone who was there as they all walked the cross country, it would be lovely to get more East Sussex members up there and to experience a Pony Club Championship for any of the disciplines.

I should add Dressage to Music, Mounted Games, Polo Cross and Polo teams were all competing too so certainly added to the atmosphere. 

Thank you Pony Club and fingers crossed we can get there again next year.

Lucinda Morgan