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HoE/SRC SOLIHULL SUPERSTARS Endurance Team
At the British Riding Clubs Endurance Teams final held on Sunday 5th September at The Robin Hood Challenge in Nottinghamshire the Solihull Superstars won the Best Turned Out award and came 6th out of 11 teams. The girls did really well but we were slightly hampered by a bit of bad luck - REPORT
BEFORE
the start ...
AFTER
the finish !
BRITISH RIDING CLUBS TEAM CHALLENGE
All credit goes to Lisa Giovine for keeping it (and us) all together throughout the organisation of the BRC Team Challenge. It is my understanding that there has always been an Endurance Riding Club Team Challenge, but the profile was raised this year with John Hudson contacting as many BRC's as possible to try and get more members involved in the sport. Being a member of Solihull Riding Club, my attention was drawn to the e-mail marketing the Endurance Challenge and my services were duly offered, as I do like being involved in a team.
We started off with about 12 members being interested and Lisa organised team meetings (in a pub of course!) so that everyone could learn a bit more about what is involved and how to go about entering a ride. Quite a few members entered Cannock Chase ride for the experience, then quite a few decided it wasn’t for them, and we eventually dwindled to just 4 of us for the team qualifier at Cirencester. Isobel France, Dorothy Hasty, Sue Lees and yours truly (Anne Green) all completed successfully gaining 3 grade 2’s and a grade 3, and our combined score put us in second place in the league table where we stayed right up until the day of the finals.
Unfortunately Sue and Isobel withdrew their services as the date of the final clashed with another event, so pressure was on Lisa to find some more BRC members willing to have a go, and pressure was on Dorothy and myself to stay fit and have sound horses as 2 of the qualifying team members had to be at the finals. Helen Foster was able to come to the rescue as her horse had a virus on the day of the qualifier and wasn’t able to attend, but Cosmo recovered and came along to Ludlow ride to train with Dot and myself. Helen also managed to get to Cranham and Dot and I also did Provost Lodge to keep up the momentum.
I know that Dot has foregone some of her Saddlebred shows in order to do the team challenge, and I have sacrificed doing some 40km rides in order to train with the team instead, but we were still missing our 4th team member and even though we could have entered a team of three as it is the best 3 scores that count we really wanted the cushion of a 4th member. Lisa by this time I think was ready to have a heart attack and was contemplating coming along herself, but then a lonesome soul who had qualified as an individual at Lions Tail, as she couldn’t get a team together was desperate to be part of a team and had contacted John Hudson to see if he could help.
John knew about our plight, and Annette Goodman was duly put in touch with us and was delighted to join the team as she has strong links with Solihull having a daughter who lives in Olton. Annette is a member of East Midlands Dressage Club, and e-mails started flying all over the place as we were all eager to find out about her and what she’d done, and we also started to try and decide what to wear, when to enter and all the many other questions and things to do up to the date of the finals. Lisa in the meantime had managed to secure sponsors to provide our attire, and after much debate and more to-ing and fro-ing of e-mails we plumped for a lime green theme, which sounds awful but looked fab !
Another team meeting was arranged prior to the event (in a pub of course!) and Annette made the journey from Nottinghamshire to be with us. Final information was distributed, Annette talked us through some of the route as she lives just 3 miles from Southwell racecourse and was familiar with the terrain, and at the 11th hour (Lisa was nearly having another heart attack), our goodies arrived from our generous sponsors
and PLATINUM FROG who supplied us and our crew with polo shirts, hat covers, baseball caps and numnahs, all beautifully inscribed with our team name “Solihull Superstars”.
Lisa travelled to the venue the day before the final to attend the team briefing with Annette, and the rest of us travelled up on the big day. We all arrived safely and Lisa had managed to find us a parking spot all together. We had a final team briefing, crews got busy sprucing up our horses for the vetting and turn out presentation, then off we all went over to the pre-ride vet. All passed so at least we would all get a ride, and before we knew it we presented to the turn out judges and off we set. Our tactics were to let the faster horses (Annette and Helen) go on ahead and Dorothy and I would do our best behind. Annette and Helen had a cracking ride and successfully completed in just over 2 hours and were very near to our maximum speed allowed.
Unfortunately Dorothy and I didn’t have as much luck and things started to go wrong. I fell off Sid after about a half-hour into the ride when he spooked violently at a flapping laminate sign. I’ve had him for 15 months now and that is the first time I have fallen off him, but it just had to be today of all days !! Thankfully he didn’t run off, so I got back on board and just kept my legs firmly clamped on for the rest of the ride as he is known to be a twit ! We met our crew at the first crew point, got sloshed and watered in a nanosecond, then we were off again. Just after the first crew point, we joined a road for a short stretch but there was a nice wide verge so we cracked on.
Sadly Dorothy’s horse pulled off a shoe along this stretch, and although we waved and bawled frantically as we watched our crew disappear the opposite way, they didn’t see us as they were too intent on getting to the next meeting point. So out came the mobile phone, only to get voicemail services so messages were left and thankfully Lisa rang back fairly quickly and things were put into motion to get the farrier out. I was given instructions, no, ORDERS, to carry on, and for me that was the worst thing having to leave Dot on her own, but I knew Lisa was on her way to the rescue ! Sid also likes to follow a bum, and everyone else was long gone so I wasn’t really sure how we’d get on.
I didn’t realise it at the time, but we were the last team to set off so there was no one else behind to catch us up either, and I did the rest of the ride completely on my own. Sid made it hard work for me, and I had to get off and lead him past a garden centre, dismount again at a weighted gate as every time I moved the handle and the weight moved he ran backwards, we had to be led by the steward over the level crossing, then he didn’t want to leave her, and he nearly didn’t get to the finish line as he wanted to get through an earlier gap in the rails to join the other horses at the venue ! However, we did eventually complete the ride and passed the final vetting.
Dorothy in the meantime got Ryan’s shoe put back on, only for it to come off for a second time so she finished the ride without the shoe, but sadly vetted lame so it was down to our 3 scores to count - drama or what !! The prize-giving was scheduled for 4pm and most of the teams had stayed behind so it was a nice atmosphere. The best turnout award was announced first and our team was delighted to win the beautiful trophy. Then for the ridden award there were 11 teams at the final and awards down to 6th place. Sadly we weren’t placed and were awarded completion rosettes for our efforts.
Then the following day we were all e-mailed (yes, more e-mails) as there had been a mistake in the scores and our team was actually 6th even after our disasters, so big big thanks to Lisa our team manager, huge thanks to our sponsors