Jumping and Jappeloup

Interesting day at St Seurin sur l'Isle on Sunday. Not exactly successful, but we had fun anyway......

Nahiade, the big horse from the club that Ali was riding, was fine to load, travelled well, was happy to be hanging around by the trailer, tacked up and in the first collecting ring. Then she went into the main collecting ring with the jumps and after the first one, charged off round and round in circles...... So Ali just sat there and let her get on with it, and got her calmed down and ready to jump some more practise jumps, and eventually she was OK jumping them more like she does back home at the club.

First competition nerves, we thought, then Ali went in to do her round. She jumped the first two fine then shot off round the arena and poor Ali had to really fight to get her under control enough to jump the rest of the course. She got her round, but racked up a score of faults for "refusals" (charging past a jump she was supposed to go over) and time faults. Her instructor, Carole, initially thought it might have been Ali's nerves getting to thet horse, but then she got her calmed back down in the collection ring before the second class and she was cool as a cucumber. But once back in the ring, the same thing happened, it looked to me like she (Nahiade) was really stressing about the whole thing. Ali got eliminated that time for missing 3 jumps.

So Carole decided to jump her herself and did an engagement sur terrain for the Club 2 class.......and exactly the same thing happened, calm as you like in the collecting ring, and tearing round like a demon in the class. So we are a bit stumped by this. I wonder if something bad happened to her during a comp and now she thinks it'll be like that every time? Maybe that's why she was sold off? Or maybe she just got too used to doing speed classes......

If only they could talk........

Still, got some nice pics....

.....even though it was seriously chucking it down all afternoon, this was the collecting ring

St Seurin's claim to fame is that it was the home of Jappeloup, the little French jumping horse that won gold at the Seoul Olympics in 1988. I remember him doing a lot of the same competitions as Milton, one of my faves. As it happens they've just made a film about him (only in French as far as I know) which we went to see the other day.

Here he is in the eighties alongside the late, great Milton

and winning that gold medal

He's buried at St Seurin, we saw his grave and his old stable door plaque

 

And guess what? Pierre Durand, his rider, was actually there giving out the prizes......

Shame Ali didn't win one....... :-/