Week 2 PC National Championships

We are so proud that our intermediate team qualified for the Pony Club National Championships again this year, having won at Area Dressage.

Erin, Megan and Zoe — had a fantastic time at Champs, narrowly missing the rosettes by just one point to finish 11th overall. Out of 38 area-winning teams, this is a brilliant result, especially for a team of three riding with no drop score.

All three riders produced very competitive tests:

Erin and Sophie scored 67%, finishing 12th individually.

Megan and Betty scored 66.33%, finishing 11th individually — agonisingly close to the rosettes.

Zoe is forever grateful to Sienna Scriven for the ride on her wonderful pony Smurf, who scored 66.5% and finished 13th. Zoe unfortunately had one error on a long demanding test — always costly at this level, but completely understandable under the pressure of a championship arena.

The next day, Megan also competed in the Open competition – well done to her and the lovely Betty.

In the show jumping competition we just had Erin Neale representing Flamstead on lovely Sophie. On the Wednesday she jumped in the Elite class where she just had a pole in each round, with the fences at 1.20m. This was good enough for a super 5th place.

The following day they jumped in the 1.10 champs where they jumped 3 brilliant speedy rounds, leaving them in 3rd place out of nearly 60 starters. 2 fantastic days of jumping by Erin and Sophie, flying the Flamstead flag very successfully, WELL DONE!

Flamstead quizzers qualified as winners and second place at the area qualifiers early this year. This week at National Championships both teams displayed a very high level of knowledge, helped by a training day with Clare. Against 44 teams the task was always going to be a tough one.

Flamstead Stars -Hugo, Chloe and Zoe posted impressive scores across tricky rounds and achieved full marks in two of them. They finished 15th overall and earned a rosette — no small feat at the Pony Club National Championships.

Flamstead Galaxy -Nicole, Amelie and Violet posted strong scores across several difficult rounds, even achieving full marks in Round 6 — understanding the needs of horses and ponies — and finished 21st overall.

Both teams should be extremely proud of their achievements. They are all individually excellent members of our branch.

In the Eventing we had Jemima Hunnisett qualified for the 90 and Josie Reid for the Chairman’s Cup (105).

Both girls produced stunning tests to leave them right near the top of the leaderboard. Jemima then jumped a lovely clear in the show jumping but sadly lowered both parts of the double for 8 faults. The cross country course was causing a lot of problems, in particular fence 4 some angled brushes and fence 11 which involved a run down a steep hill and a very tight turn to an angled brush. Jemina and Bally flew through these combinations but sadly got caught out a couple of fences later at the corner, and then again at the skinny into the second water. This was Jemima’s first season competing at this height so to have qualified for Champs was very impressive, and she now has some homework to do to come back and be really competitive next year.

In the Chairman’s Cup, the cross country runs first, with the show jumping in reverse order the following day. Josie had a brilliant ride around a tricky cross country course, jumping all the technical fences with ease. Unfortunately Beano totally misread a very simple fence under a tree in quite dark conditions and picked up a very frustrating 20 penalties here which prevented them from heading into the show jumping in the lead. A few more faults picked up in the show jumping the following day put them a bit further down the order sadly.

Well done to all the Flamstead pony club members competing at Champs, as always you did a super job representing us and did us proud.