The CVRC team that qualified for the BRC Arena Eventing Championships headed off for faraway Aston Le Walls on Thursday, March 3. The entrants in the 80cm team class were Sian Harris on Quinn, Jess Holman on Millie, Celena Wolfe on Dude, and Debbie Bull on Beau. The support team included Celena’s partner Andy and CVRC chairman Janet.
The team had a good journey up, with a stop for a leg stretch and a graze around Gloucester. Once they got to the venue there was time to get acclimatised and prepare for the big event on Friday, March 4.
Teams captain Sian reports:
"What fun we had! It was a fantastic day for the team.
"Jess did a beautiful round but was very unlucky to have the last joker fence for 6 penalties. Debbie was next up: and she did a very good job of riding a very anxious Beau and he will have learnt a lot from it.
"Sian did a very quick round on Quinn and had one show-jump down for 4 faults. Next up was the star of the team, Celena, who executed a lovely clear round.
"We came 13th out of 24 teams around a big, bright championship course.
"A massive thank you to Janet and Andy for being fantastic help, support and chief videographers!”
Celena said: “Tober Dubalay (Dude) is voting with his feet for this XC stuff, flying round 21 fences clear! The water walk was for me...I needed to collect myself! Dude barely broke a sweat and was ready for more.”
Jess said: Even after six hours of travelling, Millie was as ever keen to tackle the challenge and enjoyed every second of it with our team mates, we just unfortunately took the joker pole at the last hurdle but overall, we had a brilliant round and had lots of fun. Thank you to Sian or organising the team event and trip, to Celena and Andy for taking us in the party bus, and to Janet being the team helper - we had lots of fun! Foxhill Equestrian were great hosts for both the horses and the CVRC team.
"It was an experience we will never forget and we cannot wait for the next event."
