Massive congratulations to Charlie Burns who competed for Scotland as part of a three person team in the Tetrathlon competition held at the Royal Windsor Horse Show. Charlie finished second as an individual and first as part of the Scotland team. What a fantastic result – well done.
Barrier Animal Health
Spring Festival Championships 2023
Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire Roundup!!
What a weekend our wee club has had. For some, it has been many many months since the qualifying process started, and it is now all finished for this year.
We ended up with 8 members qualifying over the 3 disciplines (dressage, arena eventing and showjumping) Which, given that the whole of area 19, 1 and 17 (Scotland and Northern Ireland) were trying to qualify is quite an achievement in itself!
For the festival itself, we had 6 L&R members competing as sadly 2 had to drop out (Sophie Barrett had other commitments with her British Eventing U18 team endeavours and Eddie Eadie sadly had a lame horse)
So for Dressage we had Megan Black and Sophie Alexander who did amazingly well in big big classes to secure a 7th and 6th placing. The girls were incredible given it was their first big competition with literally hundreds in each class. They also cheered each other on and completely embodied the spirit of pony club.
Sunday saw our brave Arena Eventers take to the ring in a ferocious few rounds over a very demanding and technical course that wasn’t for the faint of heart. Our seniors Molly Bower and Charlie Burns were absolutely sensational in their classes, with a 5th for Molly and an amazing 2nd for Charlie which was an absolutely wonderful result.
Monday was showjumping day! The venue was absolutely heaving with a sea of pony club clad riders literally buzzing with excitement. Sophie Alexander started us off with the foundation class. She had a beautiful clear round and placed 16th out of 70 competitors.
She was back into the breech for the debut class which was a very challenging course that was catching out a LOT of folk. So sadly Sophie was eliminated at jump 10. Charlie was next in and had a really unlucky pole as it was a blistering time!
Then next up was our youngest competitor, Amy Capper who was hoping to qualify for the mini majors tournament at Olympia. Sadly, despite an awesome effort she was just pipped at the post.
Next up for the challenge class was Charlie Burns who kept up his winning performances for a wonderful second place out of 50 plus riders. Which was remarkable!
Our showjumping team of Charlie, Sophie and Cara were lying in 7th place with Cara still to jump!
And Cara rode it like she stole it which secured her a marvellous 5th place!!
So with Charlie’s 2 points, Cara’s 5 and Sophie’s 16, our showjumping team managed the impossible and secured 2nd place over all in the team competition out of 60 teams! And in the dying embers of the festival experience, Cara and Sophie received their rosettes from the CEO of pony club. Poor Charlie didn’t quite make it back for prize giving as he was off being awesome at another sporting endeavour!
So all in all an absolutely amazing achievement for all involved. And despite being a small club, with not many people attending the competition, I think we more than proved that L&R are a force to be reckoned with!
Well done to everyone and a big thank you to all the parents who put in so much hard work. Also a MASSIVE shout out to the committee members and parents that volunteered their time to help at the festival.
