I just had Vendredi Biats out in France doing the CCI* for six year old horses. He traveled out really well and loved staying away from home.
He unfortunately had a pretty early draw and did his test early on Thursday morning. I was delighted with how he went and how he coped in such a big arena, he did some super work and it was definitely his best 1* test to date. He made one tiny jog step in his walk and came a little against the hand for a moment when he suddenly saw the big spectators stand.
Other than those tiny mistakes he was super, staying nicely in the contact and good in his frame, so I was rather disappointed with his mark of 50.2. They were marking extremely tough on the first day and although I was disappointed with the score it still left us in 2nd place over night. Unfortunately the judges seemed to get out of bed in a better mood on the Friday and didn’t seem to mark nearly as toughly. Due to this we moved from 2nd to 10th and were one of only two combinations from the Thursday to still be in the top ten on day two.
Watch our test here:
Although the cross country wasn’t massively big, it had a few testing questions and was the first real stamina test Vendredi Biats had ever faced. The course was nearly 9 minutes long. He made it feel easy and flew round, he didn’t tire at all and finished easily inside the time, maintaining our 10th spot.
He trotted up really well on Sunday morning and didn’t seem any the worse for all his exertions the day before. The show jumping track was up to height and had some technical lines, but Vendredi Biats jumped a super round and made feel very easy. His clear jumping moved him up to a very creditable 7th place in the very competitive Young Horse World Championships.
