International victory in Italy

 

Our international season started with a long-distance fact-finding trip to Italy with Grafennacht. Formerly ridden by William Fox-Pitt, her owner, Amanda Gould, and William sent her to me last Autumn following William’s retirement from top level competition. However, in order for us to do a five-star together, we first had to run at a four-star long event, the options for which were few and far between – if we are to go to a spring five-star our only chance was to go to Portugal or Italy, both of which would take three days to get there.

Thankfully the trip was fruitful – she won the CCI4*-L at Montelibretti, finishing more than 24 penalties ahead of the rest of the field.

It was a long way to go to get a qualification, but it was a useful week in terms of building our partnership and for me to learn a bit more about her. She did a lovely dressage test, then I set out across country just thinking about getting a qualifying result, but ended up letting her stride on as the going was near perfect.

Her show jumping has been her achilles heel, and although I had a hypothesis beforehand about how I wanted to approach, it was our first real chance to try out this new approach in competition. She jumped as well as I could have hoped, and she managed to extend her lead even further.

Montelibretti was a wonderful event. The organisers were very hospitable and I enjoyed seeing a lot of European faces, catching up with old friends and meeting some new ones. Eric Winter designed the cross-country course, and it was a good test for us.

The strangest moment of my week happened while I was riding in an arena alone, when something unexpected trotted through it. I had to do a double take before realising that it really was a huge male wolf!

I hadn’t thought further than Montelibretti, but now that we have our five-star qualification under our belts it has given us options. In the meantime she’ll have a quiet week in the field.