CDI Achleiten, Austria

WOW, what a beautiful, family, friendly competition, and one that I look forward to attending again in the future. Thankyou to Team Max-Theurer for opening your doors and organising such a lovely event.

Although my competition weekend didn't exactly go according to my plan we did secure fourth place in the GP Kur with Relampago and our second MES qualification for WEG with Ferra. Both horses performed under their ability in the Grand Prix, perhaps due to the 40 degree temperature and humid conditions or simply perhaps the jockey kept getting in the way leaving valuable points laying in the sand..... despite silly mistakes in the Grand Prix, Relampago has never felt better in form and returned to the arena in the Kur to perform what I believe to be our best performance to date with scores for technical hovering around 69-70% and artistic around 75-76%.

Ferra did a top job. Perhaps suffering a little too much in the conditions as well and still being a little overwhelmed with this whole idea of hours of travelling, camping in tent stables and then of course her new rider and all her crazy ideas. She started the test strong with many 8s however her rider couldn't count and messed up both the zigzag and the one tempis costing valuable points. We did do enough however for Kentucky qualification, and I am growing by the day in how much I believe in this horse.

To complete my weekend of things not going to plan, I had a little accident while unloading the lorry, resulting in a broken foot and crutches. I am not exactly sure how long this will slow me down. It is not so painful but, inconveniently it is the size of an elephants foot at the moment so putting my riding boots on is going to be a challenge. We have made an alteration to my show schedule and will be missing the next tournament in Fritzens and starting instead the following weekend in Pompadour, France. Hopefully this buys me a little additional recovery time.